


Without Anything

by MellytheHun



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempt at Humor, Background Relationships, Communication, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak is Bad at Feelings, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Good Friend, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Good Significant Other, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Fix-It of Sorts, Friendship, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Muteness, Mutual Pining, Nonverbal Communication, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Requited Love, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is Bad at Feelings, Richie Tozier is a Good Friend, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:47:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23862535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Inspired by kaboomslang's tweet:"Richie's Magic Voice accidentally condemns Eddie with, "a sacrifice? I nominate Eddie," and then with "we can still help him!" Maturin slides in like True Neutral Ursula to say "YOU CAN STILL HELP HIM" and Richie exchanges his voice for Eddie's life, mute Richie AU send tweet"
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 197
Kudos: 288





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaboomslang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaboomslang/gifts).



> Title inspired by Love Your Friends, Die Laughing by Man Overboard
> 
> Well, the night gets old, so I'm back again.  
> The day just started, because I'm up with my old friends.  
> The fat smoke, and a funny joke.  
> Sitting like a sponge, letting everything soak.
> 
> And I just got the nerve to get in the cage, so don't bite me now.  
> And I just got the nerve to get in the cage, so don't bite me now.
> 
> We made love tonight as the result of a fight.  
> When you put your arms around me, the whole world's alright.  
> And a day's worth of bitching goes down the drain,  
> When you lay in my bed and pick my brain.
> 
> Shut up! Shut up! It's my turn to talk.  
> And don't try and run before you learn to walk.  
> Because a days worth of bitching goes down the drain,  
> When you lay in my bed and pick my brain.
> 
> I left my heart with my phone in my center console.  
> I left my feelings with my wallet, and my keys.  
> I feel so stupid, cause I came here without anything,  
> But I'm finally at ease.
> 
> We made love tonight as the result of a fight.  
> When you put your arms around me, the whole world's alright.  
> And a days worth of bitching goes down the drain,  
> When you lay in my bed and pick my brain.
> 
> Shut up! Shut up! It's my turn to talk.  
> And don't try and run before you learn to walk.  
> Because a days worth of bitching goes down the drain,  
> When you lay in my bed and pick my brain.
> 
> I left my heart with my phone in my center console.  
> I left my feelings with my wallet, and my keys.  
> I feel so stupid, cause I came here without anything,  
> But I'm finally at ease.

“Hey, fuck-face!” 

Mike gets knocked down, Pennywise rounds on him, and Richie’s heart pounds, but he swears he feels thirteen years old again, staring down Bowers in broad daylight, knowing how dangerous that Bundy wannabe fucker is, knowing that if he and the Losers don’t do something stupid, and fast, that Homeschool is going to fucking die in that shitty stream, and he figures that’s where the instinct to throw the rock really comes from.

He feels it in his grasp when he throws it, of course, he’s in control of his body when he smacks the demon with it, but it doesn’t occur to him what he’s done until Mike is looking at him with shining eyes, too guilt-ridden to truly plead for help, but looking up to him like he did that day, twenty-seven years ago, like Richie is a friend who will help, like Richie will protect him if he can - and Richie wants to, just like he did back then. 

He finds himself so fucking furious with Bowers, with his cronies, with Pennywise the fucking dancing clown - fucking up his childhood, his life, making shit dangerous, and sick, and sad, and diseased, when it could have been beautiful, and gentle. It never had to be so hateful. It never had to be like this. 

The fury propels him forward, he picks up another jagged rock, and shouts out, “you wanna play truth or dare? Here’s a truth; you’re a sloppy bitch!”

Everyone looks rightfully confused when he yells that, and Richie thinks that’s fair - _he_ doesn’t even know what he means by the insult - beyond that, all he can hope is that his rage is bigger than his fear. 

Maybe that works, because It looks confused for a moment, maybe slightly offended, and that works for Richie, lights more of a fire in him, makes him want to rip that fucker apart.

“Yeah, that’s right!” Richie doubles down, staring It in its acidic eyes, “Let’s dance! Yippe-ki-yay, motherfu -”

His L.A apartment doesn’t look right, but he knows it’s his apartment - like, in a dream, how people might not look right, but he knows who they are, or he’s doing something he’d never normally do, but it makes sense to be doing in the dream. 

There was a dream he had a long time ago, back in college, and he remembers it perfectly - he was himself, but not, he was someone that looked more like Bill, though he didn’t remember Bill at the time, and he still looked different from Bill - he was different, and young. 

In the dream, he had siblings, and cousins, and his parents were there, but they didn’t look right either. His dad was a stranger of a man entirely, wearing a tanktop, and his mother was blonde and wearing a track suit, and this uncle he never actually had was weaving them all through a festival at night, until they made it to this vendor, surrounded by a circling display case, and in the display case were donuts the size of Richie’s head.

They looked so real, and he didn’t even want one, they looked so sugary, all frosted, glittering with glaze, and sugar, and crumbled cookies, and candies, and they were enormous, but he remembers how the festival looked, how the multicolored lights blinked, and twinkled, and how his cousins were getting donuts at the register while the uncle dug in his wallet to pay for them, how he thought to himself there was no way he’d be able to eat one of those donuts, and there was one with blue frosting, and crumbly bits on top, and he didn’t know what it would taste like. 

He wondered what flavor it was, if it had a filling - and he woke up, nonplussed, and carried on with the rest of his day, because the human brain is a very strange thing, and he cared about how his operated even less at twenty-four than he did at thirteen.

That’s how his apartment feels - like it would take too much effort to understand, but he doesn’t care, because it makes sense for all that it doesn’t make any at all, and that’s well enough as anything else he’s ever thought.

He let someone else decorate his apartment; a woman with a pencil skirt, and understated, but authentic Louis Vuitton pumps, and he hated himself for knowing that, at the time, that they were authentic. He never said anything about them, anyway, it didn’t matter. 

She’s the only reason his apartment looks the way it does; opulent while still slim, high arches, eggshell white walls with prints of minimalist modern art on them, and fucking coasters, like he gives a shit about his cocktail table. 

He has a drink in his hand, but he thinks there’s a snake in it. 

He’s not sure why he thinks that, but he’s pretty sure there’s a dangerous snake in the glass, and for some reason, he can’t look down to see into the glass. He can only stare at the painting on the wall, which is just an inky black crescent moon, dripping down the canvas, as if it’s melting. 

He hates that painting. 

WHY?

He isn’t sure. 

Well, he is - it’s not the painting’s fault. He doesn’t particularly like modern art, but he _does_ particularly _hate_ postmodernism, which he told the interior designing woman in the authentic Louis Vuittons, and so she got him all of these very nondescript, inoffensive pieces that can be stared at moodily for long periods of time while he drinks from an infinite glass, housing a very calculating King Cobra. 

The King Cobra is unusual, but the painting and drinking isn’t.

He never got the dripping moon painting. He still doesn’t get it. 

MUST IT BE UNDERSTOOD?

Richie supposes not. Not all art is meant to be subjected to pragmatic reductionism, some art is just meant to be enjoyed.

The glass in his hand suddenly feels like Eddie’s leg, like his calf, warm, and smooth, nestled against him in the hammock, but the sensory memory is gone as quickly as it arrives, and something hisses in his drink.

He doesn’t know if the painting is sad or not, though. Is it sad? The moon is dripping - it’s melting - that can’t be good, right? Or is it a moon at all? Maybe it’s as insignificant as a half-realized coffee stain on a napkin, and someone just tilted the canvas, and sold it. But some of it feels intentional, so maybe not?

ARE ALL HUMANS LIKE YOU?

That’s ridiculous. 

Yes, and no. 

All humans are humans, and have predictable behavioral patterns. Most humans, in most ways, can be measured, and monitored, their feelings, thoughts, impulses, and actions charted, and reduced to numbers, and made into sense, but humans are also very nebulous, and fluid, contrarian in nature, and animal in desperation. Unpredictable, sometimes, despite the numbers, and sound hypothesis’s. Grubby little fingers grappling at sophistication, like it means anything, which it both does, and doesn’t. 

THAT SOUNDS COMPLICATED.

It is, Richie admits. 

Humans are complicated. 

He’s probably complicated, even though he feels simple. 

He is a human man that lives in an apartment that he doesn’t care about, he’s a marionette for a ghost writer who isn’t all that good, but he earns paper money from play-acting on that figurative knee, and he drinks poison a lot, he stares at his paintings, and he play-acts some more for the paper money, so he can afford his apartment that he doesn’t care about, drink more poison, and stare at the paintings he doesn’t understand. 

IS UNDERSTANDING YOUR SURROUNDINGS VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU?

Yes, Richie believes. He has to understand. He’s always had to understand. He has to understand, or he won’t know when something’s not right with it. And if he’s comfortable not understanding, that means he’s home, and he hasn’t felt at home since the seventh grade, sleeping over at Stan Uris’s house, having said something off-color, and thinking that Eddie was gonna shriek at him for it, but instead he laughed so hard, he held his belly like it hurt, which made Stan laugh, which made Bill laugh, which made Mike laugh, and then Ben, and Richie didn’t understand it, but that was fine. 

WHY?

Because he loved to make them laugh. He loved when he got it right, when he hit a stride, and the room was full of joy, because he’d brought it with him. Even if he didn’t see the pattern, even if he couldn’t chart it, or explain it to someone else, or even remember the shitty joke he told. 

“I had a grandfather,” Richie explains, tilting his head at the painting, though it’s hard to voice anything, it feels like his mouth is full of pudding, or something.

He doesn’t remember his grandfather’s face, he was so young the last he saw his grandfather - he was nine, maybe. He remembers his grandfather enjoying him very much, playing with his grandfather’s golfing trophies because he didn’t have any action figures on hand, and his grandfather would eat half a grapefruit every morning, and Richie remembers that because he remembers wanting to taste it, because it looked pretty, and because it looked pretty, he thought it would taste pretty.

It was tart, though, almost sour, he hated it immediately, and his grandfather laughed heartily at his screwed up face - and there was a radio in the kitchen. It was stupid.

HOW CAN A RADIO BE STUPID?

It was an orange - it was a big, plastic orange that said ‘Tropicana,’ on it, and it had a fake straw sticking out of it, which Richie thinks must have been an antenna, and it could only really get two channels clearly, but one of those channels played a lot of Peter Frampton, and he remembers that radio, how it was ugly and strange in the small kitchen, how it didn’t go with everything else in the entire house, but he liked it anyway. He liked it, even though it was stupid, and sort of ugly, and didn’t work right. 

That’s home, Richie thinks. The acceptance, and gladness of something so mediocre, so odd, specific, uneven - not at all like the minimalist work he has hanging on his white walls, works that called themselves art, but could be rendered, re-rendered, printed and re-printed, and slapped up on his walls for him to glare at while being aggressively lonely. 

The white walls, the paintings, the stiff couch, the dark stained entertainment center, the stupid coasters he couldn’t be paid to give a shit about - they weren’t like being wrong about grapefruit. Not at all like riding his bike down the middle of the road on a summer morning, not at all the hammock in the clubhouse, like the stupid, plastic radio. Not at all like Stan Uris’s bedroom, late at night, ornithology books all around, a hamper with a broken handle, dividers in his drawers to separate his socks from his underwear, gangly boys ugly and cry-laughing at something really unmemorable he barely recalls having said at all. 

He doesn't have a home now, he has no plastic radio, no sleepover, no hammock - he has a place he lives, and he doesn’t care about it, he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t get it, and if he felt fine about not getting it, the way he did about the radio being out of place, or everyone laughing when he didn’t expect them to, or no traffic striking him down on his fucking bike in the middle of the road, or Eddie’s leg pressing up against him like Eddie wanted it that way - it would be home somehow, but it isn’t home. 

His bare feet pad through the floor-plan in the same old patterns, a mental patient in a ward of his making, his brain digs and grinds down the same old grooves like a bored index finger hypnotizing its owner by sliding sand around on the beach in a spiral, over and over, his calloused hands trace the outlines of the same old fears, while he lives alone, and regrets the same old regrets.

His apartment has a beautiful view, and lots of natural light, which used to be something he didn’t care about, but now he does, he guesses, because he notices it. God, it’s like Locked-In Syndrome, being stuck inside his fucking apartment.

He charts his behaviors, in a way - he spends a lot of time, standing in front of that painting, wondering if he’s meant to be happy, or sad, or anxious when he looks at it, unsure of what it means, if it means anything at all, and he drinks too much, until his thoughts are slithering, slippery, disappearing over the precipice of barbed cliffs, taking ill-advised turns as all that natural light pooling in his living room turns polluted and dark, looping round, and round like a housefly against a window, his thoughts a dog chasing its own tail. 

**“Richie?”**

_“Richie? **Richie? You okay?** Hey - **wake up** ,” Eddie encourages him, smacking his face lightly, “Hockstetter really did a number on you, huh? Fuck. I think I got some ointment in my other fanny pack for your nose - just stay there.” _

_The snow is so cold, his glasses are broken again, his mother is going to rip into him for it, talk about how expensive he is, how he has to explain this to his father, won’t believe him that he was accosted, that he doesn’t go looking for trouble as much as it finds him, and beats the shit out of him regularly._

_He groans, trying to sit up, but Eddie puts a hand on his chest to stop him, but he’s not snapping at Richie, so he must look like a fuckin’ mess, and he’s miserable, so lying down and never getting up again sounds great, actually, but the last he saw anything, Stan was getting pummeled by Bowers, and he wants to sit up and see that Stan is okay._

_As it turns out, Stan is not okay. Bowers had been whitewashing Stan’s face, screaming abuse the entire time, and Stan’s face is all fucked up from it, beaten, and shredded by ice._

_Richie says his name softly, and Stan looks over at him from where he’s trying not to cry while Bill sacrifices his scarf to help mop up the cuts, and Richie is trying hard to break the tension, so he clears his throat, and says in his best British Guy Voice, “I don’t think I’m going too far, chaps, when I say this just about takes the giddy biscuit.”_

_They all groan, Mike mutters something about beating the shit out of Richie himself, but smiles start to break out on their faces, even Stan’s, and Eddie tells him to “please, shut the fuck up, dude, I am not in the mood for your fucking British Guy right now -”_

**“Richie - hey, Rich, wake up -”**

He doesn’t feel cold anymore. There’s no ice, or snow. He can’t tell where his body is.

YOU DON’T LIKE THAT.

What?

YOU DON’T LIKE NOT UNDERSTANDING YOUR SURROUNDINGS.

He’s in his apartment, staring at that painting, holding the glass with the King Cobra in it, but there aren’t hardwood floors beneath his bare feet anymore. It’s like he’s standing on the glass surface of a display case, but beneath it is only an endless vacuum of space. He idly wonders if that's what the giant donut would have tasted like.

“I made a home in him,” Richie struggles to say, his voice moving like limbs through grey water.

There’s a terrible, and foreign sensation that follows that admission, because a second, smaller thought comes limping after, full of terrible knowledge, “I’ll never have a home again.”

_Warm blood spilling on his face and chest - the King Cobra hissing too close to his eyes, like it’s laughing - Eddie, drained, limp in his arms -_

I WILL MAKE AN EXCHANGE WITH YOU.

Finally able to turn his head, Richie looks out the ceiling-to-floor windows that lead out to his balcony, and all he sees in the ether is an enormous eye. It’s an animal’s eye. The lids are scaled. 

“H-He’s gonna die -”

HE DOES NOT HAVE TO.

“What do you want?” Richie asks.

YOU WEAR MANY FACES BY USING ONLY YOUR VOICE. I WOULD LIKE TO TRANSFORM AS YOU DO. 

“My… you want my voice?”

YES.

There’s a weight on top of him, warm, and secure, protective - he remembers the hammock, he remembers giving Eddie a raspberry on his cheek at the park; there’s something gentle as a lullaby pressing against his lips, but he can't see what it is.

“I love him.”

I KNOW.

“Then you know my answer.”

Eddie is still pulling away from him when he comes to - Richie can feel the tingling in his lips as his eyes blink open. 

“Hey,” Eddie greets him gently, a hand still cupping Richie’s cheek, “yeah, there’ee is, buddy.”

Richie moves his hand to the back of Eddie’s neck, thinking it’s unfair that he wasn’t conscious for their first kiss - he wants a redo. Asking for more, though, feels a lot like asking someone to play one more round of Streetfighter, his hand on Eddie’s neck feels a lot like displaying that he’s got one more token, if Eddie wants to just play one more time, but maybe he’s mixed up because he’s still just waking.

At his touch, though, Eddie’s manic gaze softens a little, leaning in close again.

“Hey, Richie, listen. I think I got it, man,” Eddie tells him, a smile working across his face, fresh blood darkening the bandage on his cheek as he stretches it to accommodate his grin, “I think I killed It. I did, I think I killed It for real -”

_A spray of Eddie’s blood over Richie’s face and chest, a piercing scepter of a limb cutting through Eddie’s chest, blood pouring from his mouth, thick, dark_ \- 

Richie knows what’s about to happen.

Eddie doesn’t have to die.

Richie uses his height to twist a long leg around Eddie’s waist, and rolls them, pulls them over to the side, avoiding impact with It’s claw just as it comes bearing down with deadly force. 

It leaves an indent in the stone where he and Eddie had just been, and beneath him, Eddie is shaking, looking at the spot, then back at Richie.

“Wh-what the fuck?”

He goes to answer, but nothing comes out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Eating, food, accidental outing of a character, allusions to past drug use, panic attack symptoms, cliffhanger chapter, ANGST
> 
> Head's up for this fic, I'm gonna try to update every Sunday, and also there WILL be Comfort, but I'm gonna go ahead and pile on the Hurt first lol

It didn’t take long for the Losers to figure out Richie can’t speak, and for a while, in It’s lair, they even took to screaming ‘sloppy bitch,’ at Pennywise in his stead, while he hurled rocks, and spat at It. He was cheered for when he ripped off the arm that would have killed Eddie, and it clearly worried them all when he didn’t encourage more applause.

Getting to the surface was a rushed affair, outrunning collapsing infrastructure, where everyone kept expecting Richie to be cursing, and shouting for Eddie, but he didn't make a sound. Not for a lack of trying, though.

Having escaped, bloody, torn, bruised, and freshly re-traumatized, they watch the house implode in shared silence. It’s cathartic, in a way. If Richie could say anything at all, it would probably be a joke about how the house was descending back into Hell where it belonged. 

As it is, he’s actually sort of glad he doesn’t have to think of a better joke, since he can’t share it anyway. 

The dust settles, the early morning sun is shining on them, and then all look to Richie expectantly, looking for some explanation clearly, but try as he might, he can’t talk to them.

He feels at his throat, even clears it, but no other noise comes out, and based on what he feels, it’s some type of paralysis. 

He’ll never speak again.

“C-Could be shock,” Bill offers, looking at the others as they drag their feet away from the collapsed house on Neibolt.

Richie shakes his head.

“Are you _choosing_ not to speak?” Beverly asks.

Offended at the mere suggestion that he would _ever_ stop talking by choice, Richie gives her as dry an expression as he can muster, and she laughs weakly at it, “right - sorry.”

“Did Pennywise do something?” Mike inquires, “You weren’t in the Deadlights all that long, but -”

Pointing at Mike with one hand, Richie makes a vague gesticulation with the other, loosely translating into ‘you’re on the right track, but no.’

“We need to get him to a doctor,” Eddie insists for the umpteenth time since fleeing the cistern, “This - it could be so many things! It could be from the trauma, he could’ve suffered brain damage from hitting the ground when the Deadlights dropped him - you all saw him bleeding out of his fuckin’ nose when he was caught in them too, who knows what’s going on! It could have melted his Broca Area! He needs a CAT scan! He could’ve experienced the Deadlights version of a stroke! He could have akinetic mutism! He -”

Pressing a broad hand against Eddie’s shoulder to draw his attention, Richie shakes his head as kindly as he can; it’s nice to have Eddie Kaspbrak worrying over him again, though. 

When he was young, he’d often put himself in moderately dangerous situations in the hopes of getting mildly injured, just so he could be Eddie’s sole focus for a good half hour. He liked that Eddie used to have a surplus of the green bandages just for Richie, since he always requested them when being patched up. 

He has the idle thought about how, if he had a voice, he’d tell that silly anecdote to Eddie right then, but he was never brave enough before, and what’s really changed, after all? He doesn’t have a voice, and he wasn’t using it anyway. Not in a way that mattered. 

He’s still not brave enough now. 

Frowning with his entire face in this painfully adorable way, Eddie asks, “but how do you know?”

Letting out a long exhale, Richie looks up and away for a moment, then holds up four fingers.

“Four?”

Then Richie pokes Eddie in the chest with a firm finger-gun.

“... me? For me?”

Nodding, Richie drops his hand back by his side, and looks at all the Losers that are stopped in the road now, staring at him.

Wanting to communicate, he puts his hands up by his eyes, like visors, and then spreads out his arms, as though widening his field of vision.

“You saw something? Something in the Deadlights?” Mike surmises.

Nodding almost violently, Richie points at him, then taps his chin in thought as he struggles to figure out how the fuck to say, ‘a giant, supernatural entity floating in between dimensions saw the dreamscape of my deconstructed consciousness, and assured me that if I traded it my voice, it would help me protect Eddie, who was otherwise doomed to die violently over my just waking body which I only knew, because I wasn’t experiencing time linearly.’

Figuring he might as well try, he gives a mighty shrug, and he mimes a cross over his chest, like one might do if they were praying.

“Jesus?” Beverly guesses.

“You saw _Jesus_?” Eddie follows up, disbelievingly.

Scrunching up his face, Richie shakes his head, then clasps his hands hard, in front of his chest, makes the cross again, and then points up toward the sky, staring aggressively at Bill when he does.

“God?” Bill inserts, “You saw G-God in the Deadlights?”

Shaking his head again, Richie pulls at his hair, and goes to gesture again when Bill adds, “ _a_ God?”

Hopeful that his ‘sort of,’ vibe is getting across to someone, Richie looks up at him, and Bill looks deeply into his eyes, “was it _a_ God? No, just - s-something… _like_ a God?”

Cocking his head to the side, and squinting his eyes, Richie tilts his flat hand back and forth, and purses his lips in a way that seems to read ‘you’re close enough,’ - everyone looks to Bill to riddle out the rest.

“Okay, so… you were in the D-Deadlights, and you m-mmmaybe saw a God-like thing -”

Pulling his index finger to and away from his lips, indicating a back-and-forth of speech, Richie watches Bill’s eyes widen, and nods when Bill guesses, “you _spoke_ with s-something God-like.”

“Holy shit,” Ben mumbles.

“And it… t-told you something about Eddie?”

Richie feels Eddie’s eyes burning holes on the side of his face, and his heart thumps strangely, but he nods again, only daring to look at Bill.

“What did it say about Eddie?” Mike wants to know.

Looking down at his shoes, Richie has trouble deciding how honest to be.

It’s not that he wants to lie, but the truth is messy, and weird, and _gay_ , and he isn’t sure how much to edit out so as not to frighten Eddie, or anyone else for that matter. 

Even if they all realize what he is, why he did what he did, maybe it doesn’t matter. He figures he has little left to lose now, after all - his career is down the toilet, no more Hollywood, he’s gonna lose his apartment, he’s forty with no other skill sets, he has no idea what he’s going to do without a voice.

He may as well tell them the truth.

He looks up at Bill again, and drags his finger across the front of his neck.

“It sh-showed you that Eddie was d-dying?”

Shaking his head again, Richie takes Eddie’s wrist, and taps at his watch.

“It showed you wh- _when_ Eddie was g-gonna die?”

Richie nods slowly, releasing Eddie’s arm, then leans more toward Bill, makes a semicircle with his arms, and motions them both forward, as if to say, ‘go on,’ or ‘build on that.’

Hazarding another guess, Bill rephrases, “uh… it showed you wh-when, and where?”

Richie shakes his head, and makes the on-going gesture more, and then Ben interjects, “when and how!”

One finger on his nose, and the other pointing at Ben, Richie still manages to make them all laugh a little.

Smiling at first, Bill nods, then says more seriously, “o-okay, in the Deadlights, you m-mmmet something God-like, it spoke to you, and it sh-sh-showed you how and when Eddie w-was gonna die. How’s that so far?”

Richie gives him a thumb’s up, then realizes he has no idea how to sign to them that he made an exchange; his voice, for a vague guarantee. 

He mimics a writing motion, same as he did when he asked for the check at Jade of the Orient, and he’s frustrated that this time, he can’t just say what he’s thinking.

“It _would_ be easier if he just had a pen and paper - you, uh - you wanna wait til we’re back at the Townhouse, then?” Mike offers.

Exaggerating his relief at the idea, Richie loosens his shoulders (which pop worryingly loudly), and outstretches his fist to bump, which Mike laughs at for being dorky, but still bumps.

“Well, let’s get the Hell back to the Townhouse, Jesus fuck!” Eddie yells, hurriedly pushing his way to the front, and leading them back into town.

Richie falls behind, watches the way Eddie’s shoulders bunch by his ears as he karate chops his palm over, and over, as he insists to Bill that they should still bring him to a hospital, and lists all the reasons why, refusing to take a breath. 

Mike hangs back with Richie, taking slow, long strides with him, seemingly just happy that the rest of them made it out alive, and content to take his time. 

He looks like a man with a new lease on life - and he is, Richie supposes. He’s finally free.

Richie appreciates him, appreciates his silent camaraderie, and Mike seems to sense Richie’s gratitude. They look around like they’ve never really seen Derry before, or they’re seeing it new, born out of its curse, free from its invisible chains, and it all seems brighter, and softer than before. 

They point out old stores to each other that seem brand new, they trade off kicking a stone down the street, and they both make suggestive eyebrows at each other when they simultaneously notice Bev and Ben holding hands - then they grin at each other like conspiring teenagers, and it’s almost normal.

Richie thinks to himself, _man, I fuckin’ missed you, Mike._

He wishes he could tell Mike that - wishes he could apologize for Mike being stuck in Derry all these years, apologize for nearly leaving. 

While letting his woes eat him up, Mike smiles at him in a way that makes Richie think, somehow, Mike already knows all that.

Once they arrive back at the Townhouse, Bill and Mike find him pen and paper, and he sits at the bar with it, scribbles out as fast as he can what it is that happened, all while the Losers crowd over his shoulders.

_I wasn’t in reality_

_I don’t know where I was_

_I saw a lot of stuff_

_Whatever I saw was omnipresent_

_We were sharing my mind_

_It liked my impressions_

“I swear to God, Richie, if this is some long con to make us admit you got good at impressions, I will _literally_ kill you,” Eddie announces, reading along as he writes.

Smiling sardonically, Richie writes down, _no, but that would’ve been funny_.

“No, it would not have, asshole! I’m getting a fucking hernia from this conversation alone -”

“Wait - is that why it wanted your voice?” Beverly asks.

_BINGO_ , Richie underlines.

“It wanted your voice to do impressions?” Ben wonders.

_It said it wanted the ability to transform the way my voice does_ , Richie writes.

“And you traded it for…?” Bill trails off, wanting him to expand.

_Eddie was about to get impaled_

_It let me foresee what was about to happen so I could save him_

There’s a pregnant silence, in which Bill takes a long inhale and exhale, and makes this face he always used to make when they were kids, and someone else got hurt; it’s this face that means ‘it should’ve been me.’ It’s a face full of regret, unreasonable expectation, and self-flagellation. 

Richie hates that face - everyone does - but Bill’s never been able to help it.

“I hate to be _that_ guy,” Ben starts, glancing around, “but what are you gonna do without a voice, Richie? I mean… you built your life around your voice.”

Eddie bites his lip, and looks away, while everyone else looks at Richie with terrible worry.

_I saved a lot_ , Richie writes, _I can live off my savings for at least a year._ _I guess I just have to downsize for a while_

“And then what?” Beverly interrogates, brows pulled in, “Money runs out, Richie. What’s going to happen when it’s gone?”

Richie drags his hands through his hair, takes his glasses off, and rubs the inner corners of his eyes.

After spending a full minute huffing, and massaging his forehead, he slips his broken glasses back on, and writes down;

_I don’t know_

_I don’t know how to do anything else_

_I’ll figure it out_

Not even a full beat passes, and then “Rich, maybe you should fly back with me -” Bill starts, only to be interrupted by Mike who says, “Bill, you’ve got a wife, and even silent, Richie won’t be a house guest she’ll want -” which Richie bows at the waist to - “he should come with me,” Mike continues, “I’m going on a road trip anyway.”

Richie makes a big ‘x,’ with his arms - he loves Mike, he missed Mike, but he really doesn’t want to travel anymore. He wants to climb into a bed, any bed, and possibly never get out again. He’s _that_ exhausted.

“Then come with us,” Beverly invites sweetly, indicating Ben at her side, who nods loyally to him.

He glances between the two of them, then mimes gagging, and Beverly smacks his arm playfully.

“He’s gotta come with me,” Eddie intercepts; he’s not looking at anyone, not even Richie.

Eddie’s staring hard into some middle distance, his brow furrowed in concentration and concern, one hand hoisting up his elbow, and the hand attached to the elbow rubbing at his chin compulsively.

Richie thinks he looks adorably like a very troubled ferret.

“It’s obvious - he has to come with me.”

Richie shakes his head at that, same as with all the others, which Eddie only seems to see out of the corner of his eye, but rather than caving like the rest, he sighs, and responds, “well, man, you should’ve fuckin’ considered it before dismantling your entire life in one move. I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t send you back to L.A without a fucking voice.”

Grabbing the paper again, Richie jots down; _Not that I’m not appreciative, but I got my fill of Sonia Kaspbrak when I was 13. I don’t need to know the 2.0 version_ and pushes it into Eddie’s field of vision. 

“She _isn’t_ my mother,” Eddie grumbles, though his cheeks go ruddy in a telling way.

Richie rolls his eyes, and then writes, _I’m not an invalid. I don’t need looking after. I’m going home to LA tomorrow morning as planned_

“No, you’re fucking not,” Eddie replies sternly.

_Yes, I fucking am_ , Richie writes down hastily, _and now I’m going to fucking shower. Discussion CLOSED_

With that, he gets up from the barstool, trudges up the stairs, into his room, and dissociates gently in the shower stall for a full hour. He just stares at the faded, beige tiles on the wall, and lets his thoughts float by, barely recalling them as they slip over his frontal lobe gentle as the flourish of a feather.

As he sits in the tub, allowing the spray to just wash over him, he remembers singing in the shower a lot as a teenager, improvising microphones out of bottles, detachable shower heads, soaps, and basically anything else he could inevitably drop on his toes.

‘ _You Can Call Me Al_ ,’ was a big hit in the Tozier household bathroom. Sometimes, if he was loud enough, his dad would sing back from the hallway.

Even though he was never much of a singer in general, Richie still wishes he could sing now. He can feel the phantom vibrations in his chest, and diaphragm, feel the way his tongue and throat would move to contort his audio waves, make a tune, make a Voice. 

He shuts his eyes against the spray, and just reminds himself that it’s really a small price to pay to have Eddie alive, and well. 

_It’s the one decent thing I’ve done in my entire fucking life_ , Richie thinks to himself, _At least I can die an old man, having done something even remotely noteworthy for someone else._

When he emerges from the steam, he unhinges all his achy joints just to step into loose, threadbare pajamas, slips on his mostly-useless glasses, and rejoins the Losers downstairs in the parlor - it seems that all of them had the same idea; showering thoroughly, getting into comfortable clothes, and ordering food in. 

Ben smiles at Richie as soon as re-enters the room, and almost immediately begins talking to him about an apartment he’d be glad to _gift_ to Richie in a new complex he’s overseeing. 

There’s zero possibility of Richie agreeing to it, but he lets Ben talk about it at length, because his whole face lights up talking about his work. He goes on and on about this luxury apartment, how spacious it is, and how proud he is of the panoramic view it’s got, and how he knows Richie will love the marriage of privacy and openness he’s managed to get in there.

Sighing, and sweetly reaching a hand out to Ben’s ridiculously strong shoulder, Richie only just goes to shake his head, but Ben beats him to it.

He dips his handsome face down, smiling sadly, and he says, “no, I know. I know you won’t do it, but I had to make the offer. I’m gonna keep the place open for you for a while, just in case you do change your mind. I just… I’m around, you know? I’m your friend too, Richie, and I - I’m just. I’m here. Okay?”

 _I know_ , Richie wants to say, _You’ve always been there. You’re a good friend, Ben. Always have been. Sorry I’m such a shithead all the time. You’ve always treated me well, and I haven’t always been great. I wish I had been better to you. I’ll try to be better now._

With a little ‘oof,’ of surprise, Ben accepts the hug Richie gives him, and chuckles lightly, patting him on the back. When they pull apart, Ben gives him a tight-lipped smile, like he maybe wants to say more, but he resists.

“Anyone up for b-barbecue tonight?” Bill asks the room, “I can’t imagine anyone w-wants Chinese anytime soon.”

There are some laughs, and they all make orders that Mike and Bill decide to shamelessly pick up curbside in their pajamas.

“Listen, it’s well past n-nnnoon, I’m about to fill myself up on some shredded chicken, and p-pulled pork, and I’m not about to catch sh-shit for wanting to be comfortable. We just s-saved this st-stupid town’s ass. I’ll wear whatever the H-Hell I want,” Bill declares proudly.

He is applauded for his brave, lazy decision, and he and Mike leave to pick up the Losers’ late lunches/early dinners. 

As the doors to the townhouse shut, Eddie’s eyes rove onto Richie, and Richie tries desperately to ignore the sensation, but it’s a lot like trying not to squint in a beam of sunlight. 

“You’ve had that fucking Daffy Duck t-shirt since you lived here, dude. I recognize it,” Eddie points out, gesturing at Richie.

It’s faded - the black of the shirt is nearly grey, and Daffy’s likeness has begun to peel under the strain of decades’ worth of wash cycles. It was always big on him as a kid, though it fits him nicely now.

 _It was my dad’s_ , Richie wants to explain, looking down at it.

It’s not all too sentimental a story as to how he got it, really, but he still loves the shirt a lot. 

His mother hated the shirt, and wanted rid of it, so Wentworth Tozier decided to bequeath it to his son instead; surely she would not strip her child of a beloved cartoon character, nor tell him the shirt’s origin. Therein lied the problem; it wasn’t the t-shirt itself that bothered her, but rather where Wentworth got it from.

Before Wentworth made money in dentistry, he came from poverty, and was compulsively frugal. He shopped strictly at op-shops for most of his life, and so he wasn’t picky about his lounging clothes, and while Maggie Tozier was in no way snide, gaudy, or spoiled, she was very superstitious, and really disliked that Went so often wore clothes that were donated from hospices, and funeral parlors. 

When Richie did find out that the shirt came from one of the two-dollar boxes of worn, and torn shirts having belonged to a deceased man, he would not let it go. He called it his ‘dead man shirt,’ much to his mother’s ire, and would, unprompted, tell anyone who would listen that his dad ‘wore dead people clothes.’ 

It was funny until one day he was talking to Stan about it - they’d been sipping hot cocoa in Stan’s living room, maybe only eleven or twelve years old, and Richie had told Stan about the shirt, and Stan hadn’t laughed, had looked contemplative rather, and thought aloud, ‘I wonder who will wear my clothes when I die.’

It stopped being funny after that.

“Daffy is a very fitting character for you to identify with,” Beverly states, looking at the shirt with a smirk.

He flips her off, and she laughs.

“That’s a very Daffy reaction to have,” Ben says to Richie, earning him a pinch to the waist.

“I recall a lot of work going into your _Loony Tunes_ impressions,” Beverly mentions, moving behind the bar to examine what she might shake up, “I was a big fan of your Elmer Fud, I think.”

“Yeah, but he couldn’t hold a Bugs Bunny Voice for shit. As soon as he had a carrot in hand, it became phallic jokes, and him laughing at his own bad, phallic jokes,” Eddie reminds her.

 _You know, the guy that voiced Bugs Bunny originally - Mel Blanc - he was allergic to carrots_ , Richie wants to tell them, _He was allergic to carrots, and they made him actually chew on them to get the sounds right for the cartoon. He’d take a bite, and spit the rest into a bucket, in the sound booth._

It’s a sort of useless contribution to the conversation, but he’s annoyed he can’t share it. He learned a lot of cartoon trivia like that while doing voice-acting, earlier in his career. 

He wonders if any of them have looked up his IMDb, and realized they’ve been hearing his Voices for years.

“You want a drink, Richie?” Beverly asks, contemplating the many bottles at the back of the bar, "I mean, it's past noon, and we just killed a demon alien, I think we've earned it."

When no answer comes, she seems to realize her mistake, and turns back around to face him - he shakes his head at her, trying to express somehow with his face that her apologetic eyes are unnecessary. He’s not sure how successful he is.

“Oh,” she says with a little surprise, “Okay. You sure?”

He nods, and she goes on to ask Eddie, and Ben, and while they’re talking, Richie stares down at his hands.

They’re clean now. Kind of pruny since his shower, but clean. They were filthy a few hours ago. Covered in sick, blood, grey water, dirt, grime - it’s as if it’s someone else’s hands. Not his own. He doesn’t remember his hands ever being so clean. 

He remembers holding the glass with the King Cobra in it, and an irrational part of him is fearful that if he accepts a drink, there will be a snake in it. 

He takes his notepad off the bar, and writes down the single word “venom.” 

Thinking that Richie wants to share something with the room, Ben watches him scrawl, and then says it out loud, and asks, “what do you mean?” 

_Nothing_ , Richie writes, _Something about a dream I had._ _Ask Eddie what King Cobra venom does to a person_. 

When Ben asks on Richie’s behalf, although confused as to why anyone would want to know the answer, Eddie replies, “it shuts down the central nervous system, and it’s fast-acting, so it really quickly leads to an inability to breathe, move, or speak. It can cause blindness, and vertigo pretty immediately, and cardiovascular collapse, which is as terrifying as it sounds. Weirdly, though, that’s not the thing that kills most people. It’s usually respiratory failure. Why?”

“Richie wanted to know,” Ben offers with a shrug.

Quirking a brow at him in question, Eddie would clearly like him to extrapolate, but Richie doesn’t know what to say, so he writes nothing down.

Ben says something about bringing his phone charger down from his room, and the others all jump into action, as though they’d forgotten they owned cellphones until that moment.

As they’re retrieving their phones, and setting them up to charge in the parlor, Bill and Mike return with heavy bags, and styrofoam boxes full of food that may have felt average on any other day, but taste Heavenly within the context of the last two days. 

Richie sits in one of the armchairs, next to Beverly, who’s perched on the couch with Ben, an outlet between them, charging their phones.

Richie’s is entirely dead, and Beverly has maybe two percent on hers. 

She decides she’ll deal with whatever she’s missed after she’s eaten, and encourages Richie to do the same. She says something similar to Eddie, but he’s instantly preoccupied as soon as he’s got his phone on him again, his whole face pinched unhappily.

“Myra?” Bill asks him.

Still staring down at his phone, Eddie nods, picking lightly at a side of collard greens, looking at his phone like it might bite him, but doing nothing with it yet.

“You can call her real quick,” Mike suggests, “Tell her you’ll give her an update once you’ve eaten.”

Barking out a humorless laugh, Eddie shakes his head, and responds, “no, that will _not_ fly.”

They all trade looks that Eddie either ignores, or genuinely doesn’t notice, and then Mike moves his attention to Bill, asking “you, uh - you called Audra yet?”

“Yeah,” Bill answers easily, surprising the group, “Before I showered. She didn’t w-wanna stay on long. She’s at her m-mmmom’s house, thinks I’ve had a psychotic b-break - nothing I w-wasn’t prepared for, honestly.”

“Jesus, Bill,” Mike commiserates, “Even if you thought it might happen, the reality of it’s gotta sting.”

Around a forkful of shredded chicken, Bill shrugs, and tells Mike, “I’m not as s-sad as I thought I’d be. I don’t bl-blame her, anyway. It’ll be okay.”

Predictably, to lighten the mood, and without Richie to make it happen with something off-color, or objectively disgusting, Bill takes the helm by asking Mike where he plans to travel to, and everyone has a million things to say once Mike says he’s open to suggestions.

Richie does too, but he can only write so quickly.

“Florida is _not_ tropical,” Beverly assures Mike with a smirk that seems to mean she thinks it’s adorable that his concept of ‘tropical,’ only stretches so far as Florida.

“Technically, Florida is considered semi-tropical,” Eddie inserts unhelpfully.

“If tropical’s what you w-want, there’s this p-place in Fiji I went to for a shoot -”

“ _Fiji_?” Mike yelps, grinning widely at Bill, “Man, what kinda money you think I have?”

“I’ll fly you!” Bill exclaims amongst rowdy laughter, “What? I can d-do it! I’ll even go w-with you! I could use a vacation after this b-bullshit!”

“You should see New York at least once,” Beverly offers soundly.

Mike makes a face at her, and Eddie agrees, pointing loosely at him with a plastic fork, “that face is correct. Mike wants somewhere tropical, not overpopulated, and grey.”

“Oh, what, you wouldn’t recommend Central Park to someone who’s never been there before? Broadway? Times Square?” 

“Central Park in the summer and spring is pretty beautiful, I’ll give you that, Broadway is overpriced, and Times Square is a petri dish -”

“Hot Springs National Park is where you wanna go,” Ben tells Mike over the sound of Beverly and Eddie bickering.

While Ben is making polite suggestions, Richie pushes over his notebook, and slowly everyone quiets down, to allow Mike to read.

_Moraine Lake, Canada (Summer)_

_Maroon Bells, Colorado (Spring)_

_Killington, Vermont (Fall)_

_The Palouse, Oregon (Spring)_

_Oneonta Gorge, Oregon (Summer)_

_Glacier National Park, Montana (Spring)_

“Wow, Rich. You been to all these places?” Mike asks him.

Nodding, Richie leans over, and writes down, _you’d love them_.

Smiling sort of sadly, Mike looks over the list, and mutters wistfully, “I’d have liked to hear your stories about these places, man. You better be up for writing some memoirs sometime.”

Conversation cools after that, and once they’ve all cleared their take-out boxes of even scraps, they spread out among the parlor to digest, make calls, and return urgent emails.

Eddie still seems too frightened to call Myra - at least in front of the others. He’s maybe scrolling through text messages (and if he is, there are way too many of them), Bill is talking quietly with Mike, and Ben is contentedly catching up with his emails, seemingly in no rush.

Beverly lounges back with a sigh into the couch, picks up her phone, cueing Richie that it’s okay to start molding himself back into reality again too, and they both become consumed with their phones. 

Beverly appears to have what Richie would approximate to be _five million_ missed calls, and among, collectively, seventy app notifications, not including his email, Richie’s phone is not looking much better.

He’s still considering where to even begin when a FaceTime alert shows up, and everyone looks up in response to the sound of an incoming call.

It’s Jason - his manager.

On autopilot, and under the pressure of all those eyes on him, Richie accepts the call, and realizes his mistake much too late.

“Rich! Where _the fuck_ are you!? You said you were making a fucking pit stop! This isn’t a pit stop! A pit stop takes half a day at most, and you’ve been fucking M.I.A for nearly three days! I lost you the fucking Reno nights, my guys are pissed! What the fuck kind of bender have you been on? And has your phone been on silent the last forty-eight hours!? One more missed call, and I was gonna report you as a missing person, you asshole! I’m literally going grey! Do you see this? Do you see my scalp, Rich!? It’s turning grey! Because of you! I’ve been pacing my condo, and wearing literal tracks into the fucking floors, Rich!”

Having remembered Eddie Kaspbrak in full now, and having spent the last two days with him, Richie realizes quite instantly that Jason is not only physically very similar to Eddie, but just as perpetually annoyed at him.

He can feel everyone staring in his direction, and he hates that most of them are smiling ridiculously at him.

The entire room is wondering how it is that Richie cloned Eddie, and hired him as a manager without realizing.

He goes to apologize, and insist he’ll call Jason back at a better time (when he has more privacy, and can be only slightly less humiliated that he evidently found an Eddie Kaspbrak knock-off for an agent), but nothing happens when he opens his mouth. 

Of course nothing happens.

He can’t speak anymore.

His mouth opens, and his brain makes the command to make noise, but nothing happens, and he knew that - he knew his voice is gone, but somehow it’s only now sinking in.

He stalls out like a computer.

The bubble Derry exists in is popped, and he feels dread take over.

He’ll really never speak again. 

The world is not just Derry, this event is not just limited to the county lines, it’s not just that he’ll never talk to the Losers again, it’s that he’ll never talk again, period - his life, as he knew it, is over.

As his gut tightens up uncomfortably, Richie takes a shuddering breath, and Jason becomes concerned, “Rich, it’s okay, I’m not really mad. Or - I am, just - are you okay? You don’t look okay. This is a shitty time to relapse, Rich, I’m not gonna lie, but I’ll come pick you up, wherever you’re at, just drop your location. Look, I’ll pack a bag - where are you?”

Everyone in the room can hear Jason shuffling around from the speaker, can hear how he’s eerily identical to Eddie, Richie is watching him collect a suitcase out from under his bed, and throw it open on the duvet, he wants to tell Jason he hasn’t relapsed, he’s not on a bender, he doesn’t need rescuing, this is humiliating, and horrifying, and Richie’s voice is _gone_.

His vision goes blurry, he’s having trouble breathing, and Beverly takes his phone away, out of his hands, and, stupefied, he watches her as she fixes her hair, and smiles at his manager.

“Hello?”

“Oh my God - are you Beverly Marsh?”

“I am!” she replies politely, “You know my line?”

“It’s _all_ my femme clients wear. You’re a _genius_ ,” Jason praises her, “I had no idea you knew Rich! He never mentioned! Where are you that you’re even with him?”

“His hometown, in Maine - he’s safe. Not on a bender -”

“Maine? He didn’t even tell me that much, you know. Jesus Christ. Well, at least it’s you picking up for him.”

Picking up a single, manicured brow, Beverly asks, “what do you mean?”

“Nothing bad,” Jason assures her, still sounding as though he’s packing, “You know Rich is mostly harmless. This isn’t my first rodeo, is all. I mean I’m glad someone who is not Rich that is picking up Rich’s phone is someone I consider credible, and not another one of his boy toys telling me he’s in the shower, or must’ve left his phone at their place, you know?”

Time stops.

All the heads in the room swivel to Richie, and he can feel how wide and still his eyes are, but he can’t see them. He can’t see anything, actually. There’s color, and shapes, but it’s surreal, and intangible.

A sudden on-set of vertigo, the room is tilting, and he doesn’t feel the ground beneath his feet anymore; he might throw up. He’s not sure he can, only because he’s just felt his stomach plummet through his body, down to his feet, through the fucking floor.

Someone is saying something - it might be his name, it might be a question, but he can’t hear anything over the blood pounding angrily in his skull like sirens blaring out a tornado warning. 

He can’t breathe. 

Stumbling out of his seat, rushing outside the townhouse, Richie thinks he hears Beverly say, “oh, God, no -” before passing his phone to someone else, and running after him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna try to do a double update today, since I missed last week. I've had a lot of health issues within my family, so I was away for a while and got very little done. :T 
> 
> Content Warning: Richie has a panic attack, thoughts of self-loathing, internalized homophobia, and he's generally pretty unhappy in this chapter (obviously). Richie succumbs to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
> 
> There's still more angst on the way, so hold on tight!  
> Also, in upcoming chapters, there will be ASL, and communication will be a lot simpler with Richie.
> 
> If ya wanna cry and laugh over reddie or hanbrough or stanpat or benverly i weep a lot on twitter ~

“Richie!” Beverly calls, following him out onto the sidewalk, “Richie - stop! Come here! Please!”

Hating the despair in Beverly’s voice, Richie stops where he’s at, starts shaking his head, and he’s saying, “I can’t, I can’t do this, I don’t want to look at you, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen,” but no noise is actually coming out of his mouth. He’s gripping at his hair, pressing the hearts of his palms against his forehead, and trying his hardest not to cry, but it feels like his entire body is trying to buzz out of his skin.

He's not a teenager anymore, he feels so stupid for being so scared of this shit, for storming out of the fucking townhouse because he's confronted with his mistakes, and his entire identity, like running away will fix anything, which he knows it doesn't. He already ran away, he ran away from Derry half a lifetime ago, and he may as well have been buried on Neibolt for all the good it did him. 

“Richie,” she says a little breathlessly, having caught up to him at the curb, maybe two houses down from the townhouse, “Richie, it’s okay - please, just - I was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything by it, I am so sorry that just happened, I didn’t mean to make that happen -”

He turns to look at her, and teary-eyed, he shakes his head, he’s getting dizzy doing so much head shaking - his chest contracts strangely at the way she looks at him with those big, sad eyes, and he does make a noise, but it’s almost like a gasp, not a voice. It’s just a strange breath. He has no voice.

Pointing at her, and then crossing his arms at the wrist, he keeps shaking his head, and he mouths to her, ‘you didn’t do anything,’ he points at her again, crosses his wrists, points at himself, and mouths, ‘you didn’t make me this way.’

“Make you this way? Richie, you’re not ‘some way.’ Nothing bad is gonna happen -”

‘It happened!’ he shouts in silence, gesticulating sharply, watching her watch his lips, ‘It already happened!’

“The - wait - the call, your voice, or - what are you talking about?” she asks desperately.

Making a wide arch with his arms, Richie tries to encompass Derry as a whole, throws a sharp hand in the direction of the townhouse to indicate the Losers and their collective suffering - she tries to calm him by reaching a hand out onto his arm, and placating him, “we’re all okay, though, Richie. We’re safe now -”

Running on adrenaline, he daringly flips their hold, takes her wrist very gently, and pets her forearm with care, staring down at the bruises tragically, and then alerting her to them with his free hand.

“Richie -”

He shakes his head more vehemently.

“Richie, come on - no. That’s not - it was bad, Richie, but I’m out. I’m safe now.”

Staring hard at the bruises, Richie feels mixed up, thinking he’s maybe meant to be celebrating, or something, like their shared, subjective, and debatable ‘okayness,’ and ‘safety,’ is some great achievement, but he doesn’t feel happy. He doesn’t feel safe. He’s not so numb anymore, like he was in the shower, but he doesn’t know what he is now, and he doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than being numb.

He lets her arm go, rubs at his wrists compulsively, and she steps closer to him.

“Richie... I’m worried about you.”

He’s unsure how to respond, because he thinks maybe she should be. Maybe she’s right to be worried about him. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to make it out of Derry a second time. 

“Bev!” Ben calls from the steps of the townhouse, “This guy wants to talk to you!”

Hesitating at first, Bev looks at him apologetically, as if she’s about to ignore Ben in favor of worrying over him, so he quickly mimes smoking.

“Yeah - smokes? I can get you your - yeah, okay - I can do that - I’ll get your cigarettes,” like she’s grappling at anything to help him, “I’ll be right back. Don’t move, okay?”

To show his dedication to her request, he plants himself on the curb, and just scrubs his head.

She runs off to Ben, out of earshot of Richie, and walks swiftly into the townhouse. 

Richie never self-harmed in the most conventional ways, but he practices hurting himself. He has for a very long time. He falls back on this old nightmare he’d construct, particularly in middle and high school, just to fill himself up with hate, scratch this old itch, hurt himself on it.

When he was young, he’d lie in bed, he’d shut his eyes, and he’d think about a boy he wanted to kiss, always some anonymous, blurry brunette with Bambi eyes, whose kiss felt like a bite, but Richie liked that about him - (Eddie, it was always Eddie in the daydream, it’s just for the longest time, Richie didn’t realize it, couldn’t remember it). 

As his daydream self kissed his then-anonymous lover, he’d feel warm, and tingly, and then quickly, strangely apologetic, and then scared, and then bombarded with shame, because he still wanted it so badly, and to hurt himself further, he’d transform his anonymous love into a girl as soon as his dreaming turned anymore lustful.

All the rightness of it would get wonky, be flipped on its head, he’d feel like he was lying, like he was hurting this made-up girl, and it was always someone who sort of looked like his mother for some reason - he supposes it was the blueprint for the Right Woman, in his head. She’d be young as him at first, and then they’d age rapidly, go to college together, get married, she’d get pregnant, and it was like Locked-In Syndrome, just like his apartment in L.A is now; Richie would want to scream, thrash, cry, break his way out of the mold of all that his life was supposed to look like, but he could only stand there, frozen in a dreamscape of his own making.

For Richie, the construction of a life with a woman made him feel _that_ claustrophobic, and the imaginary construction always forced him to acknowledge that he seemed to hate himself either way, which was somehow worse. 

He hated himself for loving the Bambi boy, for wanting to kiss the Bambi boy, for wanting to stay with him, for feeling warm, and tingly, and he hated himself for lying to this made-up girl, letting her invest in him in a way he could never return, that he _knew_ he couldn’t return, and resigning them both to being miserable forever.

He does that now, but now he’d not be the only one that would know he’s living a lie, if he ever found a wife, or just a woman to be with. 

_They know, they know, they know, they know_ \- it drums against his skull, a warning siren, something he used to hear in his head when classmates stared too long at him, or asked him too much about what he was wearing, or if he was dating someone.

He’s forty, he shouldn’t feel like this anymore, he shouldn’t feel like a terrified kid, but he’s never been able to shake it. 

_I gotta get out of here_ , Richie thinks to himself, but another part of his brain rudely inserts, _but where to? The_ **_where_ ** _doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered. You’re stuck inside_ **_you_ ** _, and that’s the fucking problem. There’s no medication for that, there’s no cure for that, you’re you, and you can’t get out. **You're** the venom, idiot. _

He wants to text Jason, tell him to miraculously get him an earlier flight, so he can run away right the fuck now, but he realizes his phone is still inside, and of course it is, all of his shit is inside, he's going to have to go back in there for any of it, all of it, and before he can panic anymore about it, Beverly is there again.

The skin beneath her eyes is shining, her lips and the tip of her nose are very red, and she looks paler than he last saw her.

She passes him his pack of Malboros, and doesn’t meet his eyes.

Something’s wrong.

He touches her shoulder, hoping that will communicate the single, simple ‘are you okay?’ or ‘please look at me,’ that he’s trying to get across, but she just lights her own cigarette, and murmurs, “we - we can smoke these, and then we should go inside. You’ll come back with me, right?”

He nods, and she glances up at him, smiles very weakly, and then says, “yeah. Good.”

She passes him a pad of sticky notes, and a pen that was tucked behind her ear, and announces, “I brought these out for you, in case you wanted to talk about anything. I just grabbed them from the desk, sorry I couldn’t find your notebook. It’s probably still in the parlor room.”

~~_You’ve been crying._ ~~

~~_What happened in there?_ ~~

~~_Was it me? Did I do something?_ ~~

~~_Are you okay?_ ~~

~~_I’m scared to go back inside_ . ~~

He settles on, _I really don’t want to go back inside_ , and shows it to her.

She blows out a plume of smoke, looks down at the pad, and then tells him, “I know. It’s one more night, though, Richie. We all leave tomorrow, and honestly, I'm already struggling with that. Now that I've got you all back, it's actually really hard to fly away, even though I hate this place. But, look... if you want, I can tell them all to make themselves scarce for when you go back in, if that will make you feel better."

_It won't_ , Richie knows, _I'm too old for this shit._

"You know they love you, right? That we all love you to death, Richie. You know, right?”

Looking away from her, he shrugs, and he hears her mutter, “I’m really bad at this today. I’m usually good at it. Like, handling emotional crises. I guess I’m out of juice, or something.”

_You’re handling this really well, actually, all things considered_ , Richie thinks to himself, but it feels like too much to write down. 

It doesn't feel to Richie like there's much in the world that would make him feel better about what happened with the call. He doesn't even know what to ask for, though. Somehow, 'we all love you,' isn't a satisfying response, which makes him feel selfish, and limbless.

He'd have been alarmed if people shot up out of their seats, applauding, whistling, and shouting, 'yes! Awesome! We're so pleased you're gay, Richie!' - and outright rejection would have hurt even worse than the slow, stunned glances he outran in the first place.

“They care about it - like, it’s not like I’m going to tell you ‘they don’t care,’ cause that’s not right - we all care a lot, Richie. We care about who you are, and what you want, and the thought that you’ve just been burying yourself… Richie, we hate that we didn’t know. That townhouse is full of emotionally repressed men all hating themselves for not realizing you maybe needed a different kind of emotional support than they thought to offer.”

Did Eddie feel that way? Did Eddie feel bad for not realizing Richie walked through Derry with a ticking clock over his head? It doesn't feel like so long ago that Sonia Kaspbrak was hissing about 'that gay disease,' and telling Eddie horror stories about queer folks suffering, and dying horribly, and how Eddie shook in his knock-off sneakers at just the thought. Maybe Eddie would have been too scared to be Richie's friend anymore, had he known back then. 

He could easily imagine Bill with his head in his hands, doing that self-punishment he’s so good at, probably wishing he could go back in time, and tell Richie he’d protect him. That’s very much Bill’s speed, and to Richie, it makes sense. Bill would have most definitely gotten into physical altercations on Richie's behalf, and probably gotten them both killed by trying to vocalize his pride and love for Richie. Bill has always been sweet that way, and stupidly brave, which would have helped neither of them.

He can even imagine Mike in a contemplative silence, restructuring all of his memories of their shared childhood, wondering what might have been different had he known, had anyone known.

Something in Richie feels certain that Stan already knew. He always knew everything, sometimes before they were even there to be known.

Ben may have had an inkling, but Richie thinks that’s a recent development - as in, Ben may have pieced it together within the last twenty-four hours, and only just now had it confirmed.

“Do you… keep anyone?”

Confused, Richie looks to her for further explanation, and she looks side-long at him, elaborating, “boyfriends, or any -”

He feels the blood drain from his face, he knows he’s gone pale, and her expression shrivels as she hurries to say, “sorry - okay, sorry. Sorry. It’s not - I won’t ask about it.”

_I’m the worst_ , Richie thinks to himself, hating that he's made Beverly feel so bad about a totally normal question, then wondering idly if he can convince a stranger to bury him in a vat of wet concrete. He’d pose like Han Solo in _The Empire Strikes Back_. There’s probably someone on Craigslist who’d be willing to do it.

“I’m worried about you,” she says again, softly.

_I know_ , he thinks, siphoning off another drag, slow, and intentional, _and I know it bears repeating_.

There are plenty of things that bear repeating, even the bad shit, like Derry. He'd do this all over again, a million times if he had to. 

Reminded of another cause worthy of repetition, he impulsively takes his stack of sticky notes, and writes down a hurried, _follow me_.

Without hesitation, Beverly does, and they wind up on a very long walk, full of odd stares from passers-by that wonder what two adult people are doing, walking through Derry in pajamas, and chain-smoking. It definitely looks shady.

They get some raised eyebrows in the drug store too, where Richie shamelessly swipes a Swiss Army knife while Beverly blocks the view of the security cameras, and other patrons.

“I cannot believe we just shoplifted from Keene’s pharmacy. I am fully a teenager again,” Beverly laughs, mindlessly following Richie onto the Kissing Bridge.

_That dude was such a fuckin’ creep, I hope he dies penniless_ , Richie thinks to himself, eyes roving the wooden posts lining the bridge.

Once he’s spotted what he’s looking for, he takes Beverly’s hand, and he swears to himself, it’s like being transported back in time.

He feels like he’s thirteen again, smoking stolen cigarettes with Beverly, grabbing onto her clumsily so they can jump into the quarry together, or so he can pull her close, and tell her a secret.

They were harmless secrets back then, like that he knew about a hidden power-up in one of the arcade games, and cause she was ‘so cool,’ he’d let her in on it, or which servers at the ice cream parlor he knew to be more liberal with their samplings. 

This secret is more significant, though, more dangerous, more worth keeping - he doesn’t know exactly why he’s giving it away. He trusts Beverly, though, and he always has. He knows it’s safe with her.

_This is me dropping my weapons_ , Richie thinks to himself, staring at the _R + E_ etched there, _This is me saying 'I've got nothing else on me. This is it.' I surrender._

“Oh - Oh my God,” she utters stunned and stunted, coming to stand beside Richie, staring down at the spot his eyes are glued to, “You - how old is this?”

_You asked if I kept anyone_ , Richie writes.

Handing her the sticky note, Richie squats down, takes out the new Swiss Army Knife he’s stolen, and refreshes the carving.

“Richie… you…”

He nods, even though he’s not sure how she would’ve liked to finish that sentence.

"Have you said anything to him?"

He gives her a dry look from over his shoulder.

She rolls her eyes.

"Richie, work with me here! You know what I mean!"

_What is there to say?_ Richie wonders, _What do you expect me to say to a married man? A married man, who is married to a **woman**. _

Unable to articulate all of that, he simply shakes his head at her.

She frowns, and he turns back to his carving.

"I... I get it, Richie. You know, in that way that I'll never fully understand your experience, but - I can see why you'd keep it to yourself. Just... you should tell him. Or write it to him. You know what I mean."

When he doesn't visibly respond to her in any way, she comes to crouch next to him, staring at the _R + E_ , looking charmed by it.

"That's so sweet, Richie. It deserves to be known."

He shakes his head again, and she smiles at the side of his face.

"You kept him. We all kept each other, I know, but you kept him closer. Ben kept me too, and... Richie, after everything... after all these years of running, and all the unhappiness, I can't tell you how amazing it feels to know that someone's love for me never dwindled. It never went away. He loved me, even when he didn't know me, and I... even if Eddie... even if it's not what you hope for it most to be, Richie, I know he'd be happy to know it too. He'd be happy to know that someone kept him."

In his mind, he says to Eddie, 'I kept you,' and there's a dweeby little kid, gangly, wearing bright colors, gesticulating wildly, shouting back, 'kept me!? You can't fuckin' keep people, dickwad! I'm not a fuckin' pet!' He tries to assure this young Eddie, this Eddie of his memories, that it's a romantic gesture, meant to please him, and then Eddie's blushing, and shouting again, 'did you think _Phantom of the Opera_ was romantic!? You get that she's unwell, right? Like, the phantom is fucked up for trying to keep her prisoner, and when it appeals to her, she's got like that prisoner disorder - you know, uhm - shut up! It's called... Stockholm Syndrome! Yeah! That's not romantic! Stockholm Syndrome is not romantic, Richie!' 

"Now, that's a smile," Beverly declares.

Richie didn't even notice it working over his face, but it's there. It's definitely there.

He can't help that Eddie makes him happy. 

In truth, Richie doesn't know what Eddie might say to the knowledge that Richie has loved him all their lives. 

When they were young, maybe he would have freaked out, like Richie's silly daydream posits - he remembers getting a recorder from his dad one year, maybe the seventh grade, and he'd hit 'record,' on it, then snatched Eddie's calculator away while he was rushing to get homework done between classes.

Eddie had shouted at him then too, 'give it back!' 'What?' Richie had teased,' 'give it to me!' 'What?' 'Give it to me, Richie!' and then Richie had exposed the tape recorder in his other hand, and played back, 'give it to me! Give it to me, Richie!' and Eddie had turned red as a tomato from his neck all the way past his hairline. While Richie and the other Losers had laughed, Eddie spent a good half hour shouting abuse at Richie for it.

Richie kept the recording for days, much to everyone's ire, but at home, in the dark, he'd play it and skip it just right, just to hear Eddie whine 'give it to me, Richie!' It got him so stupidly hard, and at that age, he just fluctuated violently between recklessness usually borne of a rebellious, unbridled rage, and then feverish arousal he'd chafe himself trying to relieve.

He truly doesn't wish puberty on anyone. It was a confusing, awful time.

Still, sometimes he'd listen to Eddie's voice past that recording, just to listen to him talk. He'd recorded Eddie laughing, he'd recorded Eddie explaining the differences between bacterial and viral meningitis, he'd recorded Eddie talking to Bill about the gears on his bike, and back then, Richie would shut his eyes, lie in bed, and imagine what it might sound like if Eddie were to say, 'yeah, Richie. I'll go on a date with you.' 

He'd imagine Eddie in one of his winter sweaters, maybe standing in the hallway at school, or in the doorway of the Kaspbrak household, how he might look up through his lashes to Richie, flustered to the ears, and how he might have smiled the peculiar smile he had when he was feeling bashful, and said the words, 'yeah, Richie,' - and how Richie's heart would pound at just the imagining of that answer, 'I'll go on a date with you.' 

He doesn't know what to expect from Eddie Kaspbrak now, but he tends to believe Beverly Marsh about matters of the heart.

If it made her so happy to know she'd been loved all this time, then maybe it would make Eddie happy too, even if it's not what Eddie wants.

_Besides_ , Richie thinks to himself, smoothing his thumb over the refreshed carving, _what else have I got to lose?_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Severe Angst, HURT, internalized homophobia, anxiety, fear, scattered thoughts, suicidal ideation, mention of a suicide attempt (in the past), mentions of prior drug use, grief/mourning
> 
> Okay, so, this is as angst as this fic is getting. I just wanna properly warn for the chapter. It's meant to devastate. But for those of you saying 'when is the fuCKING COMFORT COMING' - it's gonna be in upcoming chapters. This is gonna be a v low low, though. 
> 
> Also, yes, you will eventually find out what it is that made Beverly cry last chapter, and why Eddie does what he does in this one.

Exhausted, wired, and ten thousand other things, Richie finds himself walking back to the townhouse with Beverly while it’s still bright out. It’s late afternoon, maybe near three, or four. The sun has only just begun to sizzle out over the horizon, and his legs are so tired. 

When they arrive back at the townhouse, he expects a welcoming party of extremely worried faces to placate, but the place is cleared out. Everyone’s in their respective rooms, it appears. 

He’s embarrassed that Beverly must have texted them, and told them to go into hiding for the sake of his fragile ego. 

She probably phrased it with a lot more sensitivity, but the point stands. 

When they walk in, Beverly finds his phone for him, and he sees multiple notifications from Jason, and starts worrying at his lip.

**Jason H.**

**Rich omg i’m so sorry i didn’t even fucking hear myself i’m so sorry pls text me back**

**Jason H.**

**I can’t believe i just did that to you pls know i’d never intentionally do something like that, Rich, i’m so sorry**

**Jason H.**

**I haven’t slept in like 2 days bc i was seriously losing my mind over worry with u when u vanished i think that was why i just fuckin spoke without thinking**

**Jason H.**

**Pls text me back soon, Rich, I’m so worried abt u and i know i fucked up, but please let me know ur okay. I’m still ready to fly out to u or anything u need**

**Jason H.**

**I’m so fuckin sorry, Rich**

He takes a moment to type back; **I’m not mad at you, man. It’s okay. I know you’d never out me on purpose, and it wasn’t like it was live tv. I’m real fucked up right now. Like, emotionally. Not on drugs and shit. I’d call to talk you out of worrying, but my voice is gone.**

“You should go get some rest, Richie,” Beverly encourages, touching his back gently, “If you want me to come hang out with you in your room, or if there’s anything I can do… you know to just text. I’ll be there in a flash.”

She wants to ask if he’s okay, he can tell - she’s looking worried again, but in the glassy, fragile way she looked when she first rejoined him outside the townhouse. He doesn’t know what happened between her leaving him on the curb, and coming back with his cigarettes, but he knows something happened that amplified her concern. 

He can practically _hear_ the tightness in her brow.

If he wanted to communicate about the day at all (which he most assuredly does not), he’d probably tell her that the call from Jason turned the day on its head, it was a curveball out of left fucking field. He'd explain that the outing was bad, but what's worse is that it doesn’t feel like the worst of it yet.

The townhouse feels like a deserted beach, where the water has drained back into the sea; like he’s staring out at a vast shore, and the water’s receded, it’s much too quiet, and nothing feels right about it, something feels really, really wrong, in fact. And, in part, he knows what’s about to happen. He knows, instinctively, that something big is on its way, and when it comes, his bones could shatter from the force of impact alone.

He knows that whatever the big thing is, that big thing that hasn’t hit yet - it has the capacity to destroy him, and drag him somewhere dark, and deep, and eat him whole.

It just hasn’t hit him yet.

Rather than finding a way to communicate all of that, he settles for hugging her, and she burrows peacefully into the crook of his neck.

“I missed you, Richie.”

_I missed you too, Bev_ , he thinks, hugging her more tightly.

Once they’ve released each other, Richie ascends to his room, where he plans to lie down in his rented bed, and actually get some sleep, but Eddie is in the room, sitting at the very retro, but definitely authentic, writing desk at one of the corners of the room. He’s got slippers on that Richie hadn’t noticed at dinner. They’re designer.

Seeing no way out of this confrontation, Richie discreetly shuts the door behind him, shoves his cracked glasses further up his nose, and then pads over to Eddie, and looks down at the open notebook.

Eddie has clearly been flipping through Richie’s notes, some of the ink is spread on words they weren’t beforehand, as though Eddie’s been brushing his fingers over the pen work too much. He doesn’t look up from the open page when he asks, “why?”

Richie doesn’t answer that, because he can’t, but even if he _could_ speak, he’d probably just say some variation of, ‘why what?’ and so he impatiently waits for Eddie to extrapolate.

His capacity for making emotionally intellectual decisions has been outdone by the day, and knowing something bigger is coming, probably from somewhere inside him, isn’t helping him any. He would really like a drink right now, but he’s not interested in having any hallucinations about snakes.

A beat passes, and then Eddie circles the penned phrase ‘ _so I could save him,’_ and repeats, “why?”

Taking the spare pen from the desktop, Richie leans over, and writes, _what the fuck do you mean ‘why’ ? You were about to die_

“No - that’s not - you know more than anyone if - I - did you even ask about Stan?”

_What?_ Richie writes, and Eddie finally twists up to look at him.

“Did you even ask about Stan? Could this God-thing bring back Stan?”

Frozen for a moment, Richie hesitates, and Eddie jumps down his throat, “ _that’s_ what I mean! _That’s_ what I mean, fucknuts! You chose me! You didn’t even fucking think about what else it could do! You didn’t care!”

Rationally, Richie knows that Eddie doesn’t mean any of this in anger. He can tell that Eddie is taking his voicelessness harder than even he has, and that this is some kind of intense display of grief-driven rage.

Unfortunately for the both of them, Richie’s been stretched to the point of break.

_FUCK YOU_ , Richie writes diagnally across the page.

“Fuck _me_?” Eddie snaps, “Fuck _you_!”

Flipping to a new page, Richie messily gets down: 

_how the fuck are you mad at me right now_

_I saved your fucking life_

“I didn’t ask you to!” 

_I didn’t realize you’d prefer to die horribly in a sewer_

_My most sincere apologies, ASSHOLE_

“You’ve indebted me to you for the rest of my life, you fucking idiot!” Eddie shouts, glassy-eyed, truly angry, truly terrified, truly remorseful, “There’s ramifications for this sort of shit! I need to take responsibility here, for what you’ve done to yourself, for what you did _for_ **_me_ ** \- on _my_ account, Richie! This is bigger than just you! I can’t - I can’t be the reason you wind up homeless, or something! You need to fucking come home with me now, and Myra will _not_ be happy, but I need to make this right, Richie, I can't just -”

Shocking Eddie, Richie stomps, and repeatedly criss-crosses his arms, shaking his head in evident rejection.

“No!” Eddie argues, standing up, “No, you don’t get to do that shit now! You disabled yourself, Richie, shot yourself in the fucking foot, and the bullet was for me, and you want me to just - to just say ‘well, golly, mister, thanks!’ and move on with my life, and that’s not realistic, it’s not what I’m okay doing - you’ve handicapped yourself, Richie - and you’re not even telling me the truth about why!”

Eyes bugging out of his head, Richie grabs the notebook again, and writes; _how is SAVING YOUR LIFE not the answer you’re looking for?!_ and taps at the paper aggressively in Eddie’s face.

“If it was just about saving lives, you would’ve asked about Stan!” 

_FUCK you, Eddie_

_I LOVED Stan_

“Then you would have thought of him, Richie!” Eddie cries, eyes welling up, waving his arms about, “In front of something that was maybe _God_?! You would’ve thought of him! But you thought of _me_! And now I’m responsible for you, for this - this - this sacrifice that you made on _my_ behalf that’s gonna fuckin’ ruin your life!”

Richie’s eyes are filling up with tears, and he hates it, he’s embarrassed, and he writes for a few seconds, trying to blink the tears away before they fall, and then he displays the notebook for Eddie to see.

_I’m a grown man, Eddie. I take responsibility for myself. This isn’t on you, and I don’t want it to be. I’m not moving in with you and your fucking wife because you’ve got survivor’s guilt._

Smacking the notebook out of Richie’s hand, and letting it land on the floor, Eddie steps closer, and demands to know, “why?! Why me, Richie!? Why was it only me that fucking occurred to you?! Why not Mike, or Bill, or anyone else?! Why not _yourself_!?”

Richie can’t reply, of course, but Eddie is looking at him like his fury alone will reanimate Richie’s vocal cords. It does occur to Richie that Eddie might be a touch hysterical from all the condensed trauma.

He pushes Richie in the chest, sends him back a step, and eggs him on, “why me!?” and met with silence, he pushes Richie again, angrily watches Richie stumble back another step, “Richie, _why me_?!”

Grabbing Eddie by the wrists, Richie pushes back on Eddie, and tries to turn away from him, get out of the room, Eddie and he are both grieving and fresh from a shiny new trauma, he doesn’t blame Eddie for the outburst, but he doesn’t want to engage it any further.

He fears what more Eddie might say that he won’t be able to take back, or more dangerously, what Richie night _do_ to restore some balance, or meet Eddie where he stands. 

Despite a solid effort, Richie doesn’t make it to the door, because Eddie grabs his arm, spins him around, and argues, “no! Don’t fucking ignore me! Why the fuck would you do this!? Richie, it’s your _voice_ ! You’re _Trashmouth_ , Richie! I can’t stand the fucking idea of you being silent the rest of your life because of me! Why the fuck would you throw your life away like that!?”

Eddie’s eyes are swimming, his chin is wobbly, his lips are dark, and Richie’s losing his footing. 

It’s been too many hours without sleep, too many hours of suspended terror, subverting the mourning that’s been flooding his chest since they called the Uris household, and he’s wrung out.

He’s got no more fight left in him.

There’s no use.

He takes his glasses off, throws them toward the bed, steps into Eddie’s space, and takes Eddie’s face between his hands. 

He cradles Eddie’s face gently, but firmly, he leans in close, tilts Eddie’s head slightly to the side, watching how the light from the window makes specks of glowing amber in Eddie’s eyes, his Bambi eyes, and then he presses their lips together. 

It’s his answer, as much as he can give one right now. 

He kisses Eddie with an unmistakable resolve, with an intention so evident, it’s tangible. 

He feels and hears Eddie’s breath catch, and he can barely breathe himself; it feels like his heart has slipped into his throat, beating hard, fast, loud, and he turns Eddie’s head, licks into Eddie’s mouth slowly, feels Eddie shiver against him, go weak against him, and he hopes this is a deal breaker. 

In a dark, hateful place in his heart, Richie hopes Eddie will pull away from him, horror writ over his face, embarrassed for Richie, hating Richie, and he’ll retract his invitation to New York, maybe hit him, tell him this never happened, and to never bring it up again, and then maybe he’ll just let Richie go. He’ll cut Richie off like a dead limb. It will sting, it will hurt, but it might be better than being almost good enough. 

Some thirteen year old part inside him he’s only just come to remember whispers from a pitifully hopeful corner of his mind, “but what if…?” Just like that, so simply, he can see himself in a perfect world, where Eddie would tell him this is all he ever wanted, he promises to go to L.A with Richie instead of returning to his wife, a wife he’ll want to divorce, he’ll say something like, “forget New York,” and he’ll just take his ten million suitcases, and run away with Richie.

“Richie,” Eddie breathes out, just a hot puff of minty breath across Richie’s lips, “Richie - I can’t.”

That phrase is one of the worst in the world; ‘I can’t.’ 

Richie knew that, he knew from the start, but it still hurts, and so he shrugs, and begins to pull away, but Eddie holds fast to his forearms, as though frightened of what will happen when they stop touching.

“How - how long?”

Richie only stares back at him.

Eddie’s throat bobs.

“Like, since the restaurant, or -”

Richie cocks his head to the side, lets his eyes flicker back and forth between Eddie’s, watching tears film the surface of them again.

He wonders if Eddie fears him now, the way Richie used to have nightmares about.

He hears Eddie’s throat click on a swallow.

“I mean… is it… like, Ben’s postcard, it was - was it like that?”

Remembering the initials carved on the Kissing Bridge, remembering what Beverly told him, and still clinging onto a fast-fading hope, Richie nods once.

“Fuck,” Eddie says with feeling, a tear falling down his injured cheek, “Richie - fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Our whole fucking lives? Richie?”

Pulled in by that magnetic force he’s always felt around Eddie, Richie kisses Eddie again, and Eddie sways with him, hesitates in it, but it’s brief - Eddie shies away, and murmurs, “I’m married, Richie. I - I can’t do this.”

Most of his life, he was in sync with Eddie Kaspbrak - they rode the same wave length of weirdness, and he could foresee how Eddie would react, they’d stay ten moves ahead of the other, like steps to a dance only they could dance together. But, Richie doesn’t get Eddie right then.

He doesn’t get Eddie in that moment the same way he doesn’t get the dripping moon painting ever. And, he knows he could stare for hours, trace every elongated, watercolor line with his eyes, consider every curvature, debate every freckle, and even if he could unravel its meaning, Eddie would be just as married, just as married to a _woman_ , just as faithful, and morally incorruptible, and Richie would _still_ rather swallow a King Cobra than expose himself like a frayed nerve like this.

He finds himself frightfully upset, suddenly - it all comes crashing down very quickly, like all of Neibolt is collapsing on him.

The first wave is finally rushing onto the shore, coming for him faster than lightning.

_You hated Derry, you always hated Derry, Derry scared you_

_The people in Derry scared you, people picked on you, people hurt you, people shouted slurs at you, you got the shit beaten out of you_

_Bowers wanted you dead, would’ve killed you himself_

_Georgie went missing, a fucking interdimensional demon alien fucking_ **_ate_ ** _him_

_Bill all but physically dragged you into its corpse nest to avenge Georgie, all in the fucking sewers, with scores of dead children_

_Everyone fucking left, grew apart, forgot each other, you became an icon of mediocrity, you refused happiness, you’re fucking useless_

_You drank too much, you smoked too much, nothing you did mattered, you tried to kill yourself, you failed_

_You went back to Derry, you saw Eddie and realized he’s_ **_the one_ ** _, because he’s_ **_always_ ** _been the one, and you can’t say that, because he’s fucking married, to a woman, and so you got shit-faced, and all the terrible memories began to surface_

_Stan killed himself - Stan was your best friend, he was your_ **_best friend_ ** _, and he killed himself, he’s gone forever, he’s never coming back, you never get to see him again_

_You relived every awful thing Derry had ever done to you, made you into, how you never really left_

_You saw that Bev was hurt, that someone hurt her again, you never protected her, no one ever really saved her, she never really escaped either, and you just have to sit in that_

_You saw that Mike imprisoned himself in Derry all just to honor an oath you tried to fucking bail on because he’s a better man than you ever could be_

_You screamed, you ran, you put a hatchet into Bower’s fucking head, you puked your brains out_

_You faced paranormal gore, torture, and horror for hours on end_

_You lost your voice, you lost you’re fucking_ **_voice_ ** _, man_

_You’re gonna lose your career, you’re gonna lose your apartment that you don’t even fucking care about_

_You don’t know what happens next, you barely care, all you know is that Eddie married a woman he won’t lie to_

_He doesn’t love you, he feels indebted to you_

_And maybe you should’ve traded your life for Eddie’s, maybe that would’ve been easier than all of this_ \- 

He doesn’t want Eddie’s pity, he doesn’t want to be Eddie’s ‘responsibility,’ he fucking hates this entire conversation, and he wants to tear his hair out. 

The look in Eddie’s eyes makes it so much worse, the way they glisten, the lights shifting in them in this wounding way - pity is such a remorseless, wrenching thing. A simple ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ even if it’s a compulsory, polite reaction to bad news, or ‘if there’s anything I can do to help you out, let me know,’ even if both parties know that neither will reach out to the other about what’s transpired - that’s enough. It’s enough sympathy. 

Richie’s had bad shows, shows where when he walked backstage, other showmen gave him looks of sympathy, offered him a high, looked at him like a kicked animal. 

Richie’s had women over his place, seen the way they look at the sparse space, studied the ways their hands would fly to his clothes, thinking a comfort only they can give him is called for, not realizing he doesn’t enjoy it, not realizing he’s play-acting, and he fucking pities himself, that’s how he knows it’s hateful. 

Pity isn’t love. It’s just a final offer for something so weak, and broken, and hard to look at that it stirs something in the heart - just not enough for contempt. It’s not any kind of love. It’s not what Richie wants, yet he’s found himself surrounded with it, inside and out, and now coming from the one person he wants it from the least. 

Shaking Eddie’s left wrist like a maniac, Richie points to his ring, _I know!_ he wants to scream, _I know you got fucking married! I know! I get it! Your mommy must have been very fucking proud, Eddie! Fucking_ **_fuck_** _!_

He keeps shaking Eddie’s left wrist, probably looking like he’s on the verge of a psychotic meltdown, which isn’t actually all too far off, and then Richie shoves Eddie in the chest again, grief-stricken, and angry, and everything else Derry makes him feel.

_And I knew you couldn’t do this when I kissed you. I already knew. I know you can’t do this_ , Richie thinks at Eddie, _You were_ **_never_ ** _going to do this. You were_ **_never_ ** _going to return my feelings, it sucks, this_ **_sucks_** _, and I’m mad at you for being mad at me, which I don’t even understand! I’m mad that you didn’t just accept that I did this to save your life! Why do you make me honest!? Why does my honesty elicit pity from you!? Fuck you!_

He throws Eddie’s left arm back at him, as if it’s offended him, then he picks up the pen and notebook from the floor, and circles the phrase ‘ _I’m not moving in with you and your fucking wife,’_ five times.

Wide-eyed, Eddie gapes at him, and asks, “please, Richie, come on - you’re really not going to let me have peace of mind, because you don’t want to see that I have a wife? You knew I was married, and Richie, the decision you made doesn’t just effect you - how am I supposed to go back to New York, and send your happy ass off to L.A when you’ve got no idea what happens next, and no fucking support system out there?”

Wanting to scream, Richie spreads the notebook, and rips it in half, throws it on the floor, and takes a forceful hold of Eddie, aggressively ushering him out of the room amidst protests. 

“Ay! - Richie! Stop! I - we can get you an apartment, or something, just - I shouldn’t have yelled, I shouldn’t have brought up Stan - I didn’t mean for it to come out that way - I’m sorry -”

Once Eddie is standing in the hall, staring up at Richie, he manages, “I - okay - whatever is happening right now, just… I’m scared to go back to my room. I can’t sleep there.”

_Well, you’re not sleeping here with me_ , Richie thinks viciously, though all he does is stare at Eddie with an expression that conveys something along the lines of ‘and this has something to do with me how?’

Fidgeting, Eddie looks down the hall, down at Richie’s feet, then back up at Richie, but he can’t manage to keep the eye-contact. 

Glancing away, glassy-eyed, his voice crackles on, “I guess… I’ll - I can go ask Bill. To, uhm - to share his room. Tonight.”

They stare at each other a little longer, Eddie’s eyes keep flickering down to his mouth.

“I… I don’t know why I was so angry when you came in. It’s not fair to you. I’m sorry.”

_I know, I see how sorry you are and I hate it_ , Richie thinks, but all he does is sigh deeply.

With every intention of waking before everyone else, and getting the fuck out of Derry for good, come the morning, Richie takes one long, last look at Eddie Kaspbrak, closes the door on him, shuts the light, and wanders to his bed.

He can feel Eddie’s presence outside the door long after he’s dismissed Eddie, and he knows he’s being unreasonable, he knows he’s taking anger out on Eddie that Eddie has only a fraction to do with, he knows Eddie has a right to worry about him - especially right now - but he at least spared Eddie any pity.

He was supposed to be happy.

Beverly was so sure - she was so certain that Eddie would be happy.

The realization at having been kept by Richie seems to have only devastated him more, though, and that's terrible. More terrible than any of the alternatives Richie had prepared for.

His phone buzzes.

**Jason H.**

**Your friend Bill told me. Do you think it will come back?**

With just enough energy to type back, and then collapse into sleep, Richie writes back;

**No. I don’t think it’s coming back.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who's ready to get real fucken sad?
> 
> no trigger warnings for this chapter!

**This isn’t what I wanted for you.**

He knows, he knows.

**I wanted so much more for you.**

There is no more. He’s seen it all, and none of it saw him back. 

**What about Fire Island?**

Big, blue, sleepy eyes, twinkling up at him, naked feet padding the floorboards out of the bedroom, that small frame in one of his t-shirts, pretending like he wasn’t trying to impress with how expertly he flipped pancakes in the kitchen, ‘ _Jive Talkin_ ’’ by the Bee Gees playing way too loudly, singing along, dancing with those lithe arms snaking around his waist -

Maybe that was all some sort of fever dream.

“An NDA… are you serious?”

“I don’t like being perceived.”

**But you thought about it, then. Being happy. Allowing yourself.**

Of course he did, Richie’s a hedonist and always has been. He used to have a bad joke for when he was doing lines at a party, and he’d tell the room not to worry about him, because there was a secret portrait in his apartment that was taking the damage for him.

**You could still be happy.**

No. He can’t.

He’d known since he walked into that fucking cursed Chinese restaurant, and made eye-contact with Eddie. Their eyes met, and he could hear himself rehearsing it to his bathroom mirror, like he’d done a thousand times, he could hear himself crackly with puberty, lying in his bed, shutting his eyes, and talking to himself, like it was a lullaby...

“I, Richard Tozier, take you, Edward Kaspbrak, to be my wedded husband…” 

He’s got his father’s ring. Richie’s never talked about it with anyone - that his father died, or that his father left him his wedding band, but his father did die, and did leave a wedding band to him. Maybe Went knew more than he ever said, leaving his own ring behind for Richie. 

**He’d be so sad if he knew, Richie.**

Or maybe he just wanted his only son to wear his ring someday - it was Richie’s grandfather’s ring too, after all. Family heirloom, or whatever. Maybe it never meant anything beyond being a ring. But a ring is so rarely ‘just a ring.’ 

“...to have and to hold, from this day forward..” 

Jason had been there, when he had to pick up his father’s things, address the will, and all, his father’s life and legacy reduced to him, the only son, standing awkwardly in a cramped, sparse notary’s office in Venice, Florida. It’s when he learned that people, human people - they don’t go out with booms, or even whispers. It’s an embarrassing little utterance, like talking in a group setting, and someone speaks right when you’re about to, so you stop yourself, just as you make a noise. 

No whines, no cries, no whimpers, growls, or wails. Just an awkward utterance, signifying nothing. And still, Richie is just another idiot, fretting his hour upon the stage. 

That’s what it felt like too, at the office; it felt like a stage play. Like there were too many lights on him, all being controlled by some asocial neckbeard in a lighting booth barely stable enough to carry the weight of a single grown human, and the wood of the stage, and its beams so old, his fingers had blisters and splinters from just standing there. 

Not that Jason had seemed to notice anything change in Richie. Jason had been fascinated that Richie’s father had left the wedding ring for him, in fact, and because Richie doesn’t know how to process trauma, he just looked off wistfully, and said in a small voice, ‘I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.’

“...for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health…”

If Stan, or Eddie had been there with him, they’d have known to reply, ‘so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’ 

It would’ve been funny in that way that references can be, the stupid call-and-response game of pop culture, but it would’ve been poignant too, and Richie probably would have felt just as empty. Maybe not so alone, though.

As it was, all he had in his life was Jason, and Jason had looked at him oddly, and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ 

“... to love, and to cherish, till death do us part.”

“Gondor calls for aid!” Eddie had yelled out, twelve years old, fannypack smacking against his hip as he ran away from Bowers, and Richie had gotten to the bike rack first, he’d heard Eddie, seen him running across the front of the school, and he’d mounted his bike so quick he hurt himself, he’d adjusted his thick glasses, and called back, “and Rohan will answer!”

Eddie’s bike wound up getting taken apart by Bowers and his cronies that day, because he never got to it, but that memory has a particular happiness to it that cannot be stripped, no matter that neither of them laughed when Eddie made his reference, or that Richie did the stupid call-and-response for it.

It was funny in that way that references are funny, but Eddie really needed him. And Richie was really going to run headlong into danger for him. 

He’d cut Bowers off with a sharp turn, his wheels spitting up some dirt and grass with how viciously he rode into it, and Eddie had swung his leg over the bike even as it kept moving; he’d gripped Richie so tightly as they took off, and Richie had never pedaled as hard, or fast in his whole life.

‘Gonna marry that boy,’ Richie would think to himself, ‘gonna kiss that boy, hug him when he wants it, hold his hand, I’m gonna hold him when he sleeps too, so he’s warm, and safe, til death do us part.’ 

**You could have said something.**

**You should have said something.**

It wouldn’t have mattered.

**But, now you can never say it.**

He knows.

**Oh, Richie.**

He always imagined a winter wedding, something in the nighttime, full of white and blue lights, and his tie wouldn’t have been jokey, and he would’ve worn contacts for the ceremony, and then Eddie would be there, he’d have walked down the aisle toward Richie -

But he wouldn’t have. He had a springtime wedding. With a woman. 

Richie wakes to his alarm, he isn’t even sure that he slept and dreamt, it feels more like he laid down for a few hours, and had agonizingly slow thoughts. 

When he turns his alarm off, he sees it’s 3:45am, still dark out, and the lingering tendrils of his last dreaming thoughts disappear into a mist in the back of his mind, all but forgotten entirely. 

Moving sounds like such a chore, he considers how tired he is, but the very idea of seeing Eddie again is too painful to reconcile - he needs to get the fuck back to L.A.

Bags already packed, probably forgetting his phone charger, Richie gets dressed, grabs his keys, and sneaks out of his room as quietly as he can. As far as he can tell, no one is disturbed from their slumber.

Once he’s down the stairs, he immediately makes eye-contact with Mike, who’s sitting in the parlor, in an armchair, reading on a kindle.

“I wondered when I’d see you.”

Looking away, Richie begins reevaluating his escape plan. His jaw creaks like an old floorboard. 

“Don’t worry, Richie, I’m not gonna stop you.”

Swiveling his head back to Mike in surprise, Mike laughs a little, and tells him, “I’m insulted you think I’d mess with your plans, man. For the record, I think you should stay, but I’m not about to stand in your way.”

_I just want to put this in the rearview_ , Richie thinks pleadingly, _I just wanna be out of here, Mike. Look what Derry’s done to me. It always does this. It always feeds on me, takes from me. I keep paying a price for being here, I keep paying this debt I never knew I was taking on._

And he keeps paying it for a man who can’t love him back.

With a saddened sigh, Mike stands up, some of his joints audibly crackle, and they both smile a little, as Mike throws his kindle down on the seat, and says, “remember when we just had knees, man? You remember that? I used to have a left knee, and a right knee, and now I got a good knee, and a bad knee.”

They stand in semi-dark silence for a while, and then Mike opens his arms, and mutters, “just hug me before you go. That’s all. I knew you’d steal away into the night, and I didn’t wanna miss you. Come’eer.”

Objectively, it’s a small departure price to pay, but as soon as they touch, Richie can feel the already questionable structural integrity of his sanity turning to ash. 

He thinks almost immediately that this was what he wanted from Eddie; to be held, to be caught mid-fall, to have somewhere safe to land. 

He’s wanted so much more than words can accurately describe. 

He shuts his eyes, screws up his face over Mike’s shoulder, and talks down that hot, bubbling Whatever behind his eyelids; he can’t do this. Not now. He needs to get to the airport, he needs to leave Derry, he needs to let go of Eddie Kaspbrak.

He needs to let Eddie go. He needs to finally let him go.

He remembers Beverly, young, telling Ben that she wanted to get out of Derry because she’d be running toward something, and not away. 

And Richie figures he is running away - he’s packed his bags in the night, and was making an Irish Exit before he was caught.

Is there a difference, though, if he’s running toward nothing? L.A is a vacuum, it’s a void, he has no home, nothing he lives to love. As fucked a place as Derry is, with the memories of Eddie, it was at least a shrine of some kind. Now, though, without Eddie, without even the hope of Eddie, the dream of him, Derry is nothing. 

So, maybe he’s just running now. There’s nothing behind him, and nothing ahead. No ghost of Eddie to anonymously haunt his every dream now. He’s letting go. He has to.

He shudders, unintentionally grips Mike a little harder, and Mike returns the pressure, telling him, “I know, Rich. I know this can’t be what you wanted. I’m so sorry - for everything. Everything I got wrong, withholding the truth - everything. If you need anything, and I mean _anything_ , Richie, don’t hesitate to text me, or call me. You put a hatchet in Bowers for me, and you - you took the Deadlights for me, Richie. I… I’ll never be able to repay you. You ever need or want anything, I’m your man.” 

_Fuck_ wanting. 

Richie’s want turns itself over like layers of time unraveling out in space, it shakes and bellows enough to throw Earth off its axis, his want is tangled in despair, and loathing, and love so inescapably itself, he was never able to say it.

To say he’s loved Eddie Kaspbrak his entire life would be saying too little, the words dry, overused, said by common people, with common wants, common inner-lives unseen by the public. It wouldn’t be enough, to say he loves Eddie.

But if ever there was a combination of words, or noise, human or otherwise, that could have shown anyone the unending, ever-expanding dimensions of his suffering devotion, his frayed adoration, it would have been too much. 

It’s so much to hold. It’s so deep, and treacherous, it pours out of him and coats the planet over, and over, flooding every crack, and crevice, unspooling, and coming together again right behind his teeth, a lethal secret settled on his tongue, always moving out into the world through each of his pores, and every vibration of his blood moving through his body, and then always back to the place of origin.

If there ever was a noise to make, to explain it all at once, to anyone - well, he can’t say it now, anyway.

His legs are so tired. For so long, all he’s been able to do is stand, stand and run. He’s been running away from Derry his entire life, running away from himself, from folks that actually care about him, from truth, and vulnerability, and now he’s vanishing into the twilight yet again. Without anything.

His voice was all he had, it was all that protected him from the rest of the world, it was all he could give.

What does Robin Hood do without a bow, and arrow? What does King Arthur do without Excalibur? What does David do without a slingshot? 

They all had something to protect and fight for other than their own skins too, and now Richie has a whole lot of nothing behind him, and nothing ahead, and he can’t even fill the silence to put himself more at ease.

His voice was how he repented, how he gave something to the world, how he assigned himself any value, how he apologized for occupying space, for taking up time, for _being_.

He pulls away from Mike, Mike lets him go, and on his way out the door, Mike wishes him safe travels. 

While Richie walks to his car, he imagines Eddie running out to him, shouting for him to wait, telling him not to go, but nothing happens.

As Richie gets his last duffle bag into his car, and grapples with the keys, he imagines Eddie’s hands coming to the window, knocking, and slapping, telling him not to leave, not to start the car, but nothing happens.

Richie starts the car, he lights a cigarette, he pulls off, and he imagines making it into the dark, quiet suburban street, and then seeing a figure chasing his taillights, and it’s Eddie, telling him to stop the car, to let him in, but nothing happens.

He imagines all kinds of things as he drives, imagines even more as he checks his bags, goes through security, and sits at his terminal. Nothing remarkable happens, though. He just watches the sunrise through the ceiling-to-floor window at his terminal in quiet contemplation.

He remembers how yesterday, the townhouse felt like a deserted beach, where the water had drained back into the sea. He remembers thinking of it like a vast shore, where the water had receded to expose it, that it was much too quiet, and nothing felt quite right about it. Rather, he remembers his instincts telling him that something was very, very wrong, something animal, and intuitive in him telling him he needed to turn and run, that something big was on its way, and when it came, his bones would shatter from the force of impact alone.

He remembers the wave hitting him, while fighting with Eddie, all of his loss compounding, every poorly stitched wound he'd had since he was a child suddenly ripped open and bleeding freshly, how he only calmed down from the wave by forcing himself to sleep, in the wake of Eddie's rejection, and pity.

As he sits, watching the sunrise, he thinks to himself that most tsunamis have a second wave. They're often even worse than the initial wave.

It’s at the terminal sunrise that his phone begins buzzing away, and after trying to ignore it, he ultimately turns it on Do Not Disturb. The only message thread he dares to open is Jason’s, who is eager to pick him up from LAX.

Beverly keeps trying to call, though, so eventually Richie just puts the phone down altogether.

When he boards the plane, he gives the terminal a last, cursory glance - but, he needs to go. He needs to let it all go. He can't keep taking parts of himself off, and away, and burying them in Derry. He can't keep doing this. So, he boards.

He finds himself seated next to a woman near his age, with a young kid in tow; she calls him ‘Jim,’ and Richie wants to say how that’s one of his favorite nicknames (because he’s never been quite sure how ‘Jim,’ became short for ‘James,’ but he has a theory about lazy drunks slurring until 'James,' just became an indistinct 'Jims' type noise), but a sudden memory hits him like a bat to the head at the sound, and he forgets he can’t speak for a second.

* * *

The sun is out, shining on them all at the quarry, Eddie has both his fanny packs out, and is putting neosporin on a small cut on Stan’s leg; and Richie, jealous that Stan has Eddie’s undivided attention, starts agitating Eddie, “dear God, Captain, we’re losing him!”

“Shut up, Richie, it’s important that cuts like these get cleaned properly - we still need to get him to like, a real sink or something soon, to flush it out, it’s not safe to just -”

“Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a plumber!”

“Don’t fuckin’ call me ‘Jim,’ right now, I’m not in the mood for your -” Eddie starts, but Richie cuts him off again, smiling like the Cheshire cat.

He moves from where he was hovering over Eddie to stand on a nearby rock, and recites from memory, “easy, Jim! It’s all in good fun! How pleased I am to initiate you into our enterprising - mm - company! Which entitles you to all the benefits there are!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie asks helplessly, looking up at him, but still crouched next to Stan, who is also looking at Richie in confusion.

“This is a one-time special offer, Jim, lad - say no, and I’ll be forced to terminate our relationship.”

“Can I elect to just terminate our relationship regardless?” Eddie inquires drily; Stan, Beverly, and Mike laugh.

“Pirates!” Richie shouts back nonsensically, further confusing Eddie by then laughing heartily, “Pirates! If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re dead wrong! Why… _when I was just a lad looking for my true vocation, my father said, ‘now, son, this choice deserves deliberation_ …’”

Bill grins as he catches on to what it is Richie is singing, Beverly too, though Ben and Mike seem completely lost; Eddie recognizes the tune immediately, and soon after so does Stan, who rolls his eyes dramatically. 

“ _Though you could be a doctor, or perhaps a financier, my boy, why not consider a more challenging career_!”

“ _Hey, ho, ho_! _You'll cruise to foreign shores_!” Bill sings.

“Yes! Bill!”

“Why are you encouraging him?” Stan groans.

“ _And you'll keep your mind, and body sound by working out of doors_!” Beverly chimes.

“ _True friendship, and adventure is what we can’t live without, and when you’re a professional piraaaate_ …” Richie trails off, looking over to Bill.

“Th-that’s what the job’s about!”

Pumping the air with the victory of Bill’s perfect timing, Richie gestures to Beverly, and Bill to stand up with him, and jumping onto a higher rock, he directs them, “upstage, lads! This is my _only_ number!”

Laughing, they both rise, taking stations on either side of him, and Richie bows at the waist, as though he’s teaching Eddie an important lesson, sharing it closely, “ _now, take Sir Francis Drake, the Spanish all despise him, but to the British, he's a hero, and they idolize him! It's how_ _you_ ** _look_** _at buccaneers that makes them bad, or good, and I see us as members of a noble brotherhood_!”

“ _Hey, ho, ho! We’re honorable men - and before we lose our tempers, we will always count to ten_!” Beverly and Bill struggle to sing in time, smiling and giggling.

“ _Sometimes there may be someone you have to execute, but when you’re a professional piraaate_...” Beverly starts, looking over to Bill.

“You d-don’t have to wear a suit?” 

“I can’t believe you all remember this fuckin’ song,” Stan tells them, looking begrudgingly fond.

“What is this?” Mike asks.

“It’s from fuckin’ _Muppet Treasure Island_ ,” Eddie explains, trying very desperately to look peeved about it, and failing.

“Only one of the greatest films of our time!” Richie argues.

“It’s a Muppets movie!”

“Yeah, about pirates, romance, and murder!” 

“It’s fuckin’ Tim Curry -”

“Tim Curry is also rad as Hell, what the fuck is the basis of your argument here?”

“It’s for little kids! It’s -”

“ _I could have been a surgeon, I like taking things apart_!” Richie cries.

“ _I could have been a lawyer, but I just had too much heart_!” Beverly sing-laughs.

“ _I could have been in p-politics, cause I’ve always b-been a big spender_ …” 

“And me,” Richie adds in a different Voice, “I could have been… a contender…”

Rushing down the rock to take Mike by the shoulder, Richie sings at him, “ _some say that pirates steal, and should be feared, and hated - I say we're victims of bad press that's all exaggerated_!”

While Mike beams at him, clearly thinking him ridiculous, Richie insists in his best approximation of a Tim Curry voice, “ _we never stab you in the back, we never lie, or cheat - we're just, in fact, the nicest guys you’d ever wanna meet_!”

He returns to Bill, and Beverly, who sing with him, “ _hey, ho, ho! It's one for all, for one! And we'll share, and share alike with you, and love you like a son! We're gentlemen of fortune, and that's what we're proud to be, and when you're a professional piraaaate_ …”

Looking to Richie to finish the song, everyone watches as he kneels down, looking ahead reverently at some unknown horizon, “ _you'll be honest, brave, and free! The soul of decency!_ _You'll be loyal, and fair, and on the square, and most importantly; when you’re a professional piraaaate_ …”

“ _You’re always in the best of companyyyyyy_!” Bill, Beverly, and Richie sing together, torturously loudly, with the rest of the Losers alternatively booing, whistling, clapping, and laughing.

* * *

Their voices had bounced around the quarry, their laughter had carried even further, so loud, and joyful, Richie almost doesn’t hear the alert to buckle his seatbelt. 

He closes his eyes, grips the armrest tight during take-off, and he doesn’t check his phone during his layover. 

He bothers with feeding himself at an airport Starbucks, just a water and scone-thing, as it occurs to him, approaching the register, that he can’t order a coffee. Or, rather, he wouldn’t know how to sign it. He resigns himself to being a zombie the rest of the day.

When he arrives at LAX, Jason runs up to him at the carousel Richie’s bags have been assigned to, and he looks a mess. He’s pale, sort of gaunt, the lines under his eyes are so severe, they’ve aged him maybe ten years, and he’s twitchy with nerves.

He talks a lot, most of it is rapid apologies, but eventually he catches on that Richie is simply exhausted, and needs rest. He gets Richie to his apartment in record time, and requests that Richie text him in the morning. 

Richie doesn’t see why he shouldn’t, so he nods, agreeing, takes his bags out of the trunk of Jason’s car, and then sees himself up to his place.

He lights up his lock screen in the hall, outside his door.

**13 other notifications**

**Beverly Marsh**

**Richie we love you**

**(5) missed calls**

**4 other notifications**

**Bill Denbrough**

**I’m so sorry, Richie. I can’t imagine ho…**

**(7) missed calls**

**1 other notification**

**Ben Hanscom**

**Please pick up for Bev she’s really freaked out**

**5 other notifications**

**Mike Hanlon**

**And let me know when you get home safe!**

**(6) new voicemails**

**3 other notifications**

**Eddie Kaspbrak**

**Bill thinks it’s his fault you left. But I...**

  
  


He opens Eddie’s notifications.

  
  


**Eddie Kaspbrak**

**Richie, please don’t. Don’t do this. Come back.**

  
  


**Eddie Kaspbrak**

**Are you at the airport? Pick up, Richie, please, please, pick up.**

  
  


**Eddie Kaspbrak**

**I can’t go home without you, Richie. I meant what I said to you last night. How do I do this? I didn’t even get to say goodbye to you, Richie. Cancel your flight, please, just come back.**

  
  


**Eddie Kaspbrak**

**Bill thinks it’s his fault you left. But I know it’s mine. I was out of line last night, I pushed you, I got angry, I shouldn’t have. God, we used to be best friends, Richie. Did I fuck this up forever? What happened?**

  
  


_What happened?_ Richie thinks numbly, _What always happens. I_ **_wanted_** _._

He takes the spare key out from its hiding spot in his hanging, potted plant by the door, lets himself in, drags his bags in, shuts the door behind him, and promptly crumbles.

The second wave hits him, merciless, muddy, and impossible to navigate.

His aching back runs down the door, until he’s sat in the dark, crouched among his bags, tears burst from his eyes like a broken dam, streaming down his face; he tosses his glasses away, hears them crack against the floor, and it’s fine, because they were broken anyway, and reality is growing much too sharp around the edges, as it is. He doesn’t want to see it.

In the eerie silence of his apartment, Richie hears how his breath stutters, and shakes, fighting to inhale, wanting to scream on his exhales, but nothing comes out. The tears just keep rolling, his face is unbearably hot, his hands are shaking, his abdomen convulsing with the force of his sobbing, his legs are too tired to stand anymore. 

On his knees, he pushes his weight forward on the floor, his brow pressed against the hardwood, his trembling fists on either side of his head, then rocking forward, and backward with his waist, silently wailing, mourning himself.

The last strands of daylight are sliding over his glass balcony door by the time he can catch his breath. 

He's lying on the floor, watching dust motes float in the air, when he catches sight of the dripping moon painting above his couch.

He doesn't know that it always made him feel so despairing, but it does now.


End file.
